MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
BY CLAUDE TILLIER
TRANSLATED BY ADELE SZOLD SELTZER
ILLUSTRATIONS BY EMIL PREETORIUS
•
Copyright, 1917, by
Boni & Liveright, Inc.
Second Impression
Printed in the United State* of America
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. Who My Uncle Was I
II. Why My Uncle Decided to Marry 15
III. How My Uncle Meets an Old Sergeant
and a Poodle Dog, Which Prevents
Him from Going to M. Minxit's 25
IV. How My Uncle Passed Himself Off for
the Wandering Jew 68
V. My Uncle Works a Miracle 76
VI. Monsieur Minxit 81
VII. Conversation at M. Minxit's Dinner. ... 93
VIII. How My Uncle Kissed a Marquis 109
IX. M. Minxit Prepares for War 123
X. How My Uncle Made the Marquis Kiss
Him 133
XL How My Uncle Helped His Tailor to At-
tach His Property 145
XII. How My Uncle Hung M. Susurrans to a
Hook in His Kitchen 161
XIII. How My Uncle Spent the Night in Prayer
for His Sister's Safe Delivery 182
XIV. My Uncle's Speech Before the Bailiff 193
FRENOrf °
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
XV. How Parlanta Arrested My Uncle, While
Acting as Godfather, and Put Him in
Prison 206
XVI. A Breakfast in Prison — How My Uncle
Got Out of Prison 212
XVII. A Trip to Corvol 227
XVIII. What My Uncle Said to Himself Regard-
ing Duelling 239
XIX. How My Uncle Thrice Disarmed M. de
Pont-Casse 261
XX. Abduction and Death of Mademoiselle
Minxit 271
XXI. A Final Festival 279
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Claude Tillier Frontispiece
Facing Page
M. Rathery 10
Rathery at Home and How His Sister Tries to
Persuade Him to Get Married 14
Page's Banquet and the Bloody Duel Between
Rathery and Machecourt 18
Mme. Machecourt 26
Rathery and Cicero at the Seventh Bottle and How
Rathery Meets the Sergeant 32
M. Machecourt 36
M. Duranton 44
Rathery Treacherously Abandons His Sister and
Is Found by Her as the Wandering Jew. ... 72
How Rathery Cures the Peasant and Blesses the
Worshippers 80
M. Minxit 82
Rathery and Minxit and How Minxit Conducts
His Examinations 90
How Rathery Administers His Blessing Again and
•Returns Home with His Sulking Sister 106
How Minxit Rouses His Troops and Is Afterwards
Quieted by Page 124
Bonteint at Rathery's and How Rathery Gives His
Sister a Calling Down 1 54
M. Page , 158
i
ii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Rathery, Susurrans and Gaspard at the Junket and
How Rathery Justifies Himself before Mme.
Susurrans 168
Rathery at Prayer and How He Drinks Mulled
Wine 182
How My Uncle Defends Himself before the Bailiff
and Walks Off Triumphant 202
How Rathery Takes Leave of Arabella and the
Jailer Brings Him and Machecourt Two Little
Glasses of Wine 206
M. Rapin 212
How Arthus Brings Rathery Breakfast and Minxit
Brings Hirm Bonteint's Discharge 224
M. de Pont-Casse 232
Rathery on His Way to Sembert and How He
Overhears Arabella with Her Lover 236
Mile. Minxit 246
Rathery on His Way Home and the Interrupted
Fencing Lesson 258
How Rathery Lectures the Vicomte on the Nature
of the Duel and Then Disarms Him 264
How Rathery Catches up the Fainting Minxit and
Tries in Vain to Calm Him 274
Minxit and Rathery in the Field and How Rathery
Repels the Priest 280
M. Millot Rataut.. 286
MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
CHAPTER I
WHO MY UNCLE WAS
I REALLY do not know why human beings cling
so tenaciously to life. What great pleasure do they
find in this vapid Succession of days and nights, of
winter and spring? Always the same sky, the same
sun; always the same green pastures and the same
green fields; always the same political discussions,
the same rogues and the same dupes. If this is the
best that God can do, he is a sorry workman. The
scene-shifter at the Grand Opera can do better
than he.
More personalities, you say. There you are in-
dulging in personalities against God. What of it?
It is true that God is a functionary, and a high func-
tionary at that, although his office is not a sinecure.
But I am not afraid that he will bring suit against
me for damages, and build a church with the pro-
ceeds to compensate himself for the injury that I
may have done his honour.
I know very well that the gentlemen of the law
are more sensitive about his reputation than he is
himself. But that is exactly what I regard as evil.
By what title do these men in black arrogate to
i
2 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
themselves the right to avenge injuries which are
wholly personal to him? Do they hold a power of
attorney signed "Jehovah" giving them this au-
thority?
Do you believe that he is highly pleased when the
police magistrates take his thunderbolts in their
own hands and hurl them brutally at some poor
devils for an offence of a few syllables? Moreover,
what proof have these gentlemen that God has been
offended? There he is in the court-room fastened
to his cross, while they sit comfortably in their arm-
chairs. Let them question him. If he answers in the
affirmative, I will admit that I am wrong. Do you
know why he has overthrown the dynasty of the
Capets, that ancient august salad of kings, soaked
through and through with holy oil? I know, and I
am going to tell you. It is because they enacted the
law against sacrilege.
But this is not to the point.
What is it to live? To rise, to go to bed, to
breakfast, to dine, and begin all over again the next
day. When one has done these things for forty
years, it finally becomes a bore.
Me/i resemble spectators, some sitting on velvet,
others on bare boards, by far the greater number
standing, who witness the same drama every eve-
ning, and yawn every one of them till they almost
split their jaws. They all agree that it is mortally
tiresome and yet no one is willing to give up his
place.
WHO MY UNCLE WAS 3
To live — is it worth the trouble of opening one's
eyes for? All we ever do is but a beginning. The
house we build is for our heirs; the dressing-
gown we so fondly pad to envelop our old age will
be made into swaddling clothes for our grandchil-
dren. We say to ourselves: "There, the day is
ended!" We light our lamp, we poke up our fire,
we get ready to pass a pleasant peaceful evening at
the corner of our fireplace. Ra-ta-ta ! Some one is
knocking at the door. Who is there? Death.
We must go. When we have all the appetites of
youth, when our blood is full of iron and alcohol,
we are without a cent. When our teeth and stomach
are gone, we are millionaires. We have barely time
to say to a woman, "I love you." At our second
kiss she is old and decrepit. Empires are no sooner
consolidated than they begin to crumble. They are
like those ant-hills which the poor insects build with
great effort. When it requires but one grain more
to finish them, an ox crushes it under his broad foot
or a cart under its wheel. What you call the vege-
table layer of this globe is but a heap of shrouds,
thousands and thousands of them laid one on top of
the other by successive generations. Those great
names which reverberate in men's mouths, the
names of capitals, monarchs, and generals, are but
the clattering ruins of old empires. You cannot take
a step without raising about you the dust of a thou-
sand things destroyed before they were finished.
I am forty years old, I have already passed
4 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
through four professions; I have been a monitor, a
soldier, a school-teacher, and now I am a journalist.
I have been on land and on sea, under tents and by
the fireside, behind prison bars and in the free wide
world; I have obeyed and I have commanded; I
have had moments of wealth and years of poverty.
I have been loved and I have been hated; I have
been applauded and I have been ridiculed. I have
been a son and a father, a lover and a husband; I
have passed through the season of flowers and
through the season of fruits, as the poets say. In
none of these circumstances have I found any reason
to congratulate myself on being enclosed in the skin
of a man rather than in that of a wolf or a fox, or
in the shell of an oyster, the bark of a tree, or the
jacket of a potato. Perhaps if I were a rich man
with an income of fifty thousand francs, I should
think differently.
In the meantime, my opinion is that a man is a
machine made expressly for suffering. He has only
five senses through the whole surface of his body.
In whatever spot he is pricked, he bleeds; in what-
ever spot he is burned, he gets a blister. The lungs,
the liver, the bowels can give him no pleasure. But
the lungs become inflamed and make him cough; the
liver becomes obstructed and throws him into a
fever; the bowels gripe and give him the colic.
There is not a nerve, a muscle, a sinew under your
skin that cannot make you howl with pain.
Your machinery is thrown out of gear every mo-
WHO MY UNCLE WAS 5
ment like a bad pendulum. You raise your eyes to
heaven to invoke it, and a swallow's dung falls into
them and sears them. You go to a ball, and you
sprain your ankle and have to be carried home on a
stretcher. To-day you are a great writer, a great
philosopher, a great poet; a thread in your brain
snaps; they bleed you, put ice on your head — in
vain — to-morrow you will be only a poor madman.
Sorrow lurks behind all your pleasures; you are
greedy rats whom it attracts with a bit of savory
bacon. You are in your shady garden, and cry out,
"Oh ! what a beautiful rose !" and the rose pricks
you; "Oh! what a beautiful pear!" there is a wasp
on it, and the pear stings you.
You say, "God has made us to serve and to love
him." It is not true. He has made us to suffer. The
man who does not suffer is a badly-made machine, a
defective creature, a moral cripple, one of nature's
abortions. Death is not only the end of life, it is
its cure. One is nowhere so well off as in the grave.
If you believe me, you will order a coffin instead of
a new overcoat. It is the only garment that does
not make you feel uncomfortable.
You may take what I have said to you as phil-
osophy or as paradox; it is all one to me, I assure
you. But I pray you at least to accept it as a preface,
for I could not make you a better one, or one more
suitable to the sad and lamentable story which I am
going to have the honour to relate to you.
You will permit me to trace my story back to the
6 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
second generation, as they do in the funeral oration
over a prince, or a hero. Perhaps you will not lose
thereby. The customs of that time were worth just
as much as ours. The people carried chains, but
they danced with them, and made them rattle like
castanets.
For, mark you, gaiety always keeps company with
servitude. .It is a blessing for those who are subject
to a master, or who are under the hard and heavy
hand of poverty. He has given them this blessing
as consolation for their miseries, just as he has made
certain grasses to grow between the pavements that
we tread under our feet, certain birds to sing on
the old towers, and the beautiful verdure of the ivy
to smile qn wry-faced, tumble-down hovels.
Gaiety flies, like the swallow, above the splendid
roofs of the great. It stops in the schoolyards, at
the doors of barracks, on the mouldy flaggings of
prisons. It alights like a beautiful butterfly on the
pen of a schoolboy scrawling his exercises in his
copybook. It hobnobs at the canteen with the old
grenadiers. And never does it sing so loud — pro-
vided they let it sing — as between the dark walls in
which they shut up the unfortunates.
Besides, the gaiety of the poor is a sort of
pride. I have been poor among the poorest. Well,
I found pleasure in saying to fortune, "I will not bend
under your hand; I will eat my hard crust as proudly
as the dictator Fabricius ate his radishes; I will wear
my poverty as kings wear their diadem. Strike as
WHO MY UNCLE WAS 7
hard as you like, and strike again — I will answer
your blows with sarcasms; I will be like the tree that
puts forth flowers while they are cutting at its roots ;
like the column whose metal eagle shines in the sun
while the pick is at its base."
Dear readers, be content with these explanations;
I can furnish you none more reasonable.
What a difference between that age and ours!
The man of the constitutional regime cannot laugh,
he is absolutely incapable of fun.
He is hypocritical, avaricious, and profoundly
selfish. Whatever question strikes against his brow,
his brow rings like a drawer full of big pennies.
He is pretentious and bloated with vanity. The
grocer calls the confectioner his neighbour, his hon-
ourable friend, and the confectioner begs the grocer
to accept the assurance of the distinguished consid-
eration with which he has the honour to be, etc., etc.
The man of the constitutional regime has a mania
for wishing to distinguish himself from the people.
The father wears a blue cotton blouse and the son
an Elbeuf cloak. No sacrifice is too costly to the
man of the constitutional regime to satisfy his mania
for appearing to be somebody. He lives on bread
and water, he dispenses with fire in winter and beer
in summer, in order to have a coat made of fine
cloth, a cashmere waistcoat, and yellow gloves.
When others regard him as respectable, he regards
himself as great.
He is stiff and formal; he does not raise his voice,
8 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
he does not laugh aloud, he does not know where to
spit. His gestures are all alike. He says very
promptly, "How do you do, sir." "How do you do,
madam." That is good behavior. Now, what is
good behavior? A lying varnish spread on a piece of
wood to make it pass for a cane. One must behave
that way in the presence of the ladies. Very well;
but how must one behave in the presence of God?
He is pedantic, he makes up for lack of wit by
purism of language, as a good housewife makes up
for lack of furniture by order and cleanliness.
He is always oh a low diet. If he attends a ban-
quet, he is silent and preoccupied, he swallows a
cork for a piece of bread, and uses the cream for the
white sauce. He waits till a toast is proposed before
he drinks. He always has a newspaper in his pocket,
he talks only of commercial treaties and railway
lines, and laughs only in the Chamber of Deputies.
But at the period to which I take you back the cus-
toms of the little towns were not yet glossed over
with elegance; they were full of a charming ease and
freedom and a lovely simplicity.
The characteristic of that happy age was uncon-
cern. All these men, whether ships or nutshells,
abandoned themselves with closed eyes to the cur-
rent of life, without troubling where they would land.
The bourgeois were not office-seekers; they did
not hoard money; they lived at home in joyous
abundance, and spent their incomes to the last louis.
The merchants, few in number then, grew rich
WHO MY UNCLE WAS 9
slowly, without doing very much, and only in the
natural order of things. The labourers worked, not
to amass savings, but to make both ends meet. They
had not at their heels that terrible competition which
drives us, and cries to us incessantly: "Onl On!"
Consequently they took their ease. They had sup-
ported their fathers, and, when they were old, their
children in turn would support them.
Such was the ease and unconstraint of this society
that all the lawyers and even the judges went to the
tavern, and there publicly indulged in orgies. To
prevent it from being unknown they would gladly
have hung their caps on the tavern sign. All these
people, great and small alike, seemed to have no
other business than to amuse themselves. They ex-
ercised their ingenuity in playing some good joke or
in concocting some good story. Those who then
had wit, instead of expending it in intrigues, ex-
pended it in pleasantries.
The idlers, and there were many of them, gath-
ered in the public square. The market-days were
days of fun for them. The peasants who came to
bring their provisions to the town were their vic-
tims, on whom they played the funniest, cleverest
practical jokes. All the neighbours flocked there for
their part of the show. The police magistrates to-
day would regard such things as matters to be prose-
cuted, but the court officials of that time enjoyed these
burlesque scenes as well as anybody, and often took
part in them.
io MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
My grandfather was a process-server. My grand-
mother was a little woman who was teased for not
being able to see whether the holy-water basin in
church was full. She has remained in my memory
as a little girl of sixty. By the time she had been
married six years, she had five children, some boys
and some girls. They all lived on my grandfather's
miserable fees and got along marvellously well. The
seven of them dined off three herrings, but they had
plenty of bread and wine, for my grandfather had
a vineyard which was an inexhaustible source of white
wine. All these children were utilized by my grand-
mother according to their age and strength. The
oldest, who was my father, was named Gaspard.
He washed the dishes and went to the butcher
shop. There was no poodle in the town better tamed
than he. The next to oldest child swept the room.
The third child held the fourth in his arms. And
the fifth rocked in its cradk. Meantime my grand-
mother was at church, or at her neighbour's, chat-
ting. All went well, however; they managed, so-so,
to reach the end of the year without getting into
debt The boys were strong, the girls were not
bad-looking, and the father and mother were
happy.
My uncle Benjamin lived at his sister's. He was
five feet ten inches in height, carried a big sword at
his side, and wore a coat of scarlet ratteen, breeches
of the same colour and material, pearl-grey silk stock-
ings, and shoes with silver buckles. Over his coat
WHO MY UNCLE WAS 1 1
hung a large black queue almost as long as his sword.
It kept bobbing about and covered him with powder,
so that his coat, with its shades of red and white,
looked like an unbaked brick. My uncle was a doc-
tor. That's why he carried a sword. I do not know
whether the patients had much confidence in him, but
he, Benjamin, had very little confidence in medicine.
He often said that a doctor did very well if he did
not kill his patient. Whenever my uncle Benjamin
got a franc or two, he went to buy a big fish and
gave it to his sister to make a chowder, upon which
the entire family feasted. My uncle Benjamin, ac-
cording to all who knew him, was the gayest, fun-
niest, wittiest man in all the country round, and he
would have been the most — how shall I say it with-
out failing in respect to my great uncle's memory? —
he would have been the least sober, if the town
drummer, named Cicero, had not shared his glory.
Nevertheless my Uncle Benjamin was not what you
lightly term a drunkard, make no mistake about that.
He was an epicurean who pushed philosophy to the
point of intoxication — that was all. He had a su-
premely elevated and noble stomach. He loved wine,
not for itself, but for the short-lived madness which
it brings, a madness which makes a man of wit talk
nonsense in so naive, piquant, and original a way that
one would like to talk.that way always. If he could
have intoxicated himself by reading the mass, he
would have read the mass every day. My uncle
Benjamin had principles. He maintained that a fast-
12 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
ing man was a man still asleep; that intoxication
would have been one of the greatest blessings of the
Creator, if it did not cause headache, and that the
only thing that made man superior to the brute was
the faculty of getting drunk.
Reason, said my uncle, is nothing. It is simply
the power of feeling present evils and remembering
past ones. The privilege of renouncing one's rea-
son— that's something. You say that the man who
drowns his reason in wine brutalizes himself. It is
the pride of caste that makes you think so. Do you
really believe that the condition of the brute is
worse than your own? When you are tormented by
hunger, you would like very much to be the ox that
grazes in grass up to his belly. When you are in
prison, you would like very much to be the bird that
cleaves the azure of the skies with a free wing.
When you are on the point of being dispossessed,
you would like very much to be the ugly snail whose
right to its shell no one ever disputes.
The equality of which you dream, the brute pos-
sesses. In the forests there are neither kings, nor
nobles, nor a third estate. The problem of com-
munal life which your philosophers seek in vain to
unravel was solved thousands of centuries ago by the
poor insects, the ants, and the bees. The animals
have no doctors; they are neither blind, nor hump-
backed, nor lame, nor bow-legged, and they have no
fear of hell.
My uncle Benjamin was twenty-eight years old
WHO MY UNCLE WAS 13
He had been practising medicine for three years, but
medicine brought him no income, far from it. He
owed his tailor for three scarlet coats and his bar-
ber for three years of hair-dressing, and in each of
the most famous taverns of the town he had a pretty
little account running, with nothing on the credit side
but a few drugs.
My grandmother was three years older than Ben-
jamin. She had rocked him on her knees and car-
ried him in her arms, and she looked upon herself
as his mentor. She bought his cravats and pocket-
handkerchiefs, mended his shirts and gave him good
advice, to which — we must do him this justice — he
listened very attentively, but of which he did not
make the slightest use.
Every evening regularly, after supper, she urged
him to get married.
"Faugh!" said Benjamin. "To have six children
like Machecourt" — that was the way he called my
grandfather — "and dine off the fins of a her-
ring?"
"But, you pauper, you would at least have bread."
"Yes, bread, which will rise too much to-day, not
enough to-morrow, and the day after will have the
measles! Bread! What is bread? It is good to keep
one from dying, but it is not good to keep one living.
I shall be far gone indeed when I shall have a
wife to tell me that I put too much sugar in my vials
and too much powder on my queue, to come to look
for me at the tavern, to go through my pockets
I4 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
when I am asleep, and to buy three cloaks for her-
self to one coat that I buy for myself."
"But your creditors, Benjamin, how are you going
to pay them?"
"In the first place, as long as one has credit, it is
the same as if he were rich, and when your creditors
are kneaded of the right kind of dough, if they are
patient, it is the same as if you had none. Besides,
what do I need to enable me to square my accounts?
A first-class epidemic. God is good, my dear sister,
and will not leave a man who repairs his finest work
in embarrassment."
"Yes," said my grandfather, "and a man who puts
it so out of commission that it has to be buried in the
ground."
"Well,'' replied my uncle, "that is the good of doc-
tors; without them the world would be too popu-
lous. Of what use would it be for God to take the
trouble to send us diseases if men could be found to
cure them?"
"In that case you are a dishonest man; you rob
those who send for you."
"No, I do not rob them, because I reassure them,
I give them hope, and I always find a way to make
them laugh. That is worth a good deal."
My grandmother, seeing that the subject of the
conversation had changed, decided to drop off asleep.
CHAPTER II
WHY MY UNCLE DECIDED TO MARRY
A TERRIBLE catastrophe, of which I shall have
the honour to tell you presently, shook Benjamin's
resolutions.
One day my cousin Page, a lawyer in the baili-
wick of Clamecy, came and invited him and Mache-
court to a celebration of Saint Yves. The dinner
was to take place at a well-known tavern within two
gun-shots of the faubourg. The guests were a se-
lect party. Benjamin would not have given that even-
ing for a whole week of his ordinary life. So after
vespers, my grandfather, dressed in his wedding coat,
and my uncle with his sword at his side, presented
themselves at the rendezvous.
Almost all the guests were already assembled.
Saint Yves was magnificently represented in the gath-
ering. In the first place, lawyer Page was there,
who never pleaded a case except between two glasses
of wine; and then there was the clerk of the court,
who had learned to write while asleep; and the gov-
ernment attorney Rapin, who had received a half
hogshead of sour wine from a litigant, and then
had him summoned to appear at court so as to get a
i6
better one; and the notary Arthus, who had once
eaten a whole salmon for his dessert; Millot-
Rataut, poet and tailor, author of Grand Noel; an
old architect, who had not been sober for twenty
years; M. Minxit, a doctor of the neighbourhood,
who examined urines; two or three prominent busi-
ness men — prominent for their gaiety and appe-
tite; and some sportsmen, who had provided the
table with an abundance of game. At sight of Benja-
min all the guests uttered a shout of welcome, and
declared it was time to sit down to table. Dur-
ing the first two courses all went well. My uncle was
charming with his wit and his sallies. But at des-
sert the heads grew heated; all commenced shouting
at once. Soon the conversation was nothing but a
confusion of epigrams, oaths, and sallies, bursting
out together and trying to stifle each other, the whole
making a noise like that of a dozen glasses striking
against each other simultaneously.
"Gentlemen," cried Page, the lawyer, "I must en-
tertain you with my last speech in court. The case
was this. Two donkeys had got into a fight in a
meadow. The owner of one, good-for-nothing
scamp that he was, ran, took a stick and beat the
other donkey. But this quadruped would not
stand for it, and bit our man on his little finger.
The owner of the donkey that inflicted the bite was
cited before the bailiff as responsible for the doings
of his beast.
"I was counsel for the defendant. 'Before com-
WHY MY UNCLE DECIDED TO MARRY 17
ing to the question of fact,' said I to the bailiff, 'I
must enlighten you as to the moral character of the
donkey that I defend and of that of the plaintiff.
Our donkey is an entirely inoffensive quadruped; he
enjoys the esteem of all who know him, and the town
constable holds him in high regard. Now, I defy
the man who is our adversary to say as much of his.
Our donkey is the bearer of a certificate from the
mayor of his commune' — this certificate really
existed — 'which testifies to his morality and good
conduct. If the plaintiff can produce a like certifi-
cate, we will consent to pay him three thousand
francs damages.' '
"May Saint Yves bless you!" said my uncle.
"Now the poet, Millot-Rataut, must sing us his
Grand Noel :
'Down on your knees, O Christians, down !'
"That is eminently lyrical. No one but the Holy
Spirit could have inspired that beautiful line."
"I should like to see you do as much," cried the
tailor, who was very irascible under the influence of
Burgundy.
"I am not so stupid," answered my uncle.
"Silence!" interrupted Page, the lawyer, striking
on the table with all his might. "I declare to the
court that I wish to finish my plea."
"Directly," said my uncle, "you are not drunk
enough yet to plead."
1 8 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
"And I tell you I will plead now. Who are
you, old five-foot-ten, to prevent a lawyer from talk-
ing?"
"Be careful, Page," exclaimed Arthus, the notary,
"you are only a man of the pen, and you are dealing
with a man of the sword."
"It is quite becoming to you, a man of the fork
and a devourer of salmon, to talk of men of the
sword. Before you could frighten anybody, he
would have to be cooked."
"Benjamin is really terrible," said the architect.
"He is like the lion; at one stroke of his queue he
can knock a man down."
"Gentlemen," said my grandfather, rising, "I will
answer for my brother-in-law. He has never shed
blood except with his lancet."
"Do you really dare to maintain that, Mache-
court?"
"And you, Benjamin, do you really dare to main-
tain the contrary?"
"Then you shall give me satisfaction on the in-
stant for this insult; and, as we have but one sword
here, which is mine, I will keep the scabbard, and
you shall take the blade."
My grandfather, who was very fond of his
brother-in-law, did not want to contradict him, and
so accepted the proposition. As the two adversaries
rose, Page, the lawyer, said:
"One moment, gentlemen. We must fix the condi-
tions of the combat. I propose that each of the two
WHY MY UNCLE DECIDED TO MARRY 19
adversaries shall hold on to the arm of his second,
in order that he may not fall before it is time."
"Agreed!" cried all the guests.
Benjamin and Machecourt stood face to face.
"Are you there, Benjamin?"
"And you, Machecourt?"
With the first stroke of his sword my grandfather
cut Benjamin's scabbard in two as if it had been an
oyster plant, and made a gash upon his wrist, which
must have reduced him to drink with his left hand
for at least a week.
"The clumsy fellow!" cried Benjamin. "He has
cut me."
"Well," answered my grandfather, with charm-
ing simplicity, "why have you a sword that cuts?"
"All the same, I still want my revenge; and the
half of this scabbard I have left is enough to make
you beg my pardon."
"No, Benjamin," rejoined my grandfather, "it is
your turn to take the sword. If you stick me, we
shall be even, and we will quit playing."
The guests, sobered by the accident, wanted to re-
turn to town.
"No, gentlemen," cried Benjamin, in his sten-
torian voice, "let each one return to his seat. I have
a proposition to make to you. Considering that it
was his first attempt, Machecourt has conducted him-
self most brilliantly. He is in a position to measure
himself against the most murderous of barbers, pro-
vided the latter will yield him the sword and keep
20 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
the scabbard. I propose that we name him fencing-
master. It is only on this condition that I consent
to let him live. If you indorse my opinion, I will
even force myself to offer him my left hand, inas-
much as he has disabled the other."
"Benjamin is right," cried a multitude of voices.
"Bravo, Benjamin. Machecourt must be made fenc-
ing-master."
And each one ran to his seat, and Benjamin or-
dered a second dessert.
Meanwhile the news of the accident spread to
Clamecy. In passing from mouth to mouth, it grew
marvellously, and by the time it reached my grand-
mother, it had taken on the gigantic proportions of a
murder committed by her husband upon the person
of her brother.
In the less than five feet of my grandmother's
figure there dwelt a character full of firmness and
energy. She did not go screaming and crying to her
neighbours and have vinegar thrown on her face.
With that presence of mind which grief imparts to
strong souls, she saw at once what she had to do. She
put her children to bed, took all the money there
was in the house and the few jewels that she pos-
sessed, in order to supply her husband with means
to leave the country, if that should be neces-
sary; made up a bundle of linen for bandages and
of lint to staunch the wounds of the injured man
in case he should still be alive; took a mattress from
her bed, and asked a neighbour to follow her with it;
WHY MY UNCLE DECIDED TO MARRY 21
and then, wrapping herself in her cloak, she started
without faltering for the fatal tea-garden. On en-
tering the faubourg, she met her husband, whom they
were bringing back in triumph, crowned with corks.
Benjamin, on whose left arm he was supported, was
crying at the top of his voice : "Know all men by these
presents, that Monsieur Machecourt, verger to his
Majesty, has just been appointed fencing-master, in
recognition of "
"Dog of a drunkard!" cried my grandmother, on
seeing Benjamin; and, unable to resist the emotion
that had been stifling her for an hour, she fell upon
the pavement. They had to carry her home on the
mattress which she had intended for her brother.
As for Benjamin, he forgot his wound until the
next morning when putting on his coat; but his
sister had a high fever. She was dangerously ill
for a week, and during the entire time Benjamin
did not leave her bedside. When she could listen
to him at last, he promised her that henceforth he
would lead a more regular life, and said he was
seriously thinking of paying his debts and marry-
ing.
My grandmother soon recovered. She charged
her husband to be on the lookout for a wife for Ben-
jamin.
Some time after that, one evening in November,
my grandfather came home, splashed to his neck,
but radiant.
"I have found something far better than we ex-
22 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
pected," cried the excellent man, clasping his brother-
in-law's hands. "Now, Benjamin, you are rich; you
shall be able to eat as many matelotes as you like."
"What have you found?" asked my grandmother
and Benjamin at the same time.
"An only daughter, a rich heiress, the daughter
of Minxit, with whom we celebrated Saint Yves a
month ago."
"What, that village doctor who examines
urines?"
"Precisely. He accepts you unconditionally; he
is charmed with your wit; he believes you are well
fitted, by your manner and your eloquence, to aid
him in his profession."
"The devil!" said Benjamin, scratching his head,
"I am not anxious to examine urines."
"Oh, you big simpleton! Once you are father
Minxit's son-in-law, you can tell him and his vials to
go hang, and bring your wife to Clamecy."
"Yes, but Mademoiselle Minxit has red hair."
"She is only blonde, Benjamin, I give you my word
of honour."
"She is so freckled one would say a handful of
bran had been thrown in her face."
"I saw her this evening. I assure you she has
hardly any freckles at all."
"Besides, she is five feet three inches tall. I really
am afraid of spoiling the human race. We shall have
children as tall as bean-poles."
"Oh, those are only stupid jokes," said my grand-
mother. "I met your tailor yesterday, and he abso-
lutely insists on being paid; and you know very well
your barber will not dress your hair any more."
"So you wish me, my dear sister, to marry Made-
moiselle Minxit? But you do not know what that
means, Minxit. And you, Machecourt, do you
know?"
"To be sure I know. It means father Minxit."
"Have you read Horace, Machecourt?"
"No, Benjamin."
"Well, Horace says : Num minxit patrios cineres.
It is that confounded preterit that revolts me. Be-
sides, my dear sister is no longer sick. M. Minxit,
Mme. Minxit, M. Rathery Benjamin Minxit, little
Jean Rathery Minxit, little Pierre Rathery Minxit,
little Adele Rathery Minxit. Why, in our family
there will be enough to turn a mill. And then, to be
frank about it, I hardly care to marry. It is true
there is a song that says :
. . . 'What happiness
Within the bonds of married life !'
But this song does not know what it sings. It must
have been written by a bachelor.
. . . 'What happiness
Within the bonds of married life !'
That would be all right, Machecourt, if a man were
free to choose a companion for himself; but the
necessities of social life always force us to marry in
24 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
a ridiculous way and contrary to our inclinations.
The man marries a dowry, and the woman a pro-
fession. Then, after all the fine Sundays of their
honeymoon, they return to the solitude of their house-
hold, only to see that they do not suit each other.
One is stingy and the other extravagant; the wife is
coquettish and the husband jealous; one loves like a
tempest and the other like a gentle breeze; they
would like to be a thousand miles apart, but they
have to live in the iron circle within which they have
confined themselves, and remain together usque ad
vitam ceternam"
"Is he drunk?" whispered my grandfather to his
wife.
"What makes you think so?" she answered.
"Because he talks sensibly."
However, they made my uncle listen to reason, and
it was agreed that on the next day, Sunday, he should
go to see Mademoiselle Minxit.
CHAPTER III
HOW MY UNCLE MEETS AN OLD SERGEANT AND
A POODLE DOG, WHICH PREVENTS HIM
FROM GOING TO M. MINXIT'S
AT eight o'clock the next morning, my uncle fresh-
ened and dressed, was all ready to start, except that
he still needed a pair of shoes that were to be brought
to him by Cicero, the famous town-crier of whom we
have already spoken, who combined the trade of a
shoemaker with that of a drummer.
It was not long before Cicero arrived. In those
free and easy days, when a workman brought work
to a house, it was the custom not to let him go away
without first making him drink several glasses of
wine. It was a bad habit, I admit, but those kindly
ways softened the distinctions of rank. The poor
man was grateful to the rich man for his generosity,
and was not envious of him. That is why during the
Revolution there were instances of admirable de-
votion shown by servants to their masters, by farm-
ers to their landlords, by labourers to their employ-
ers, certainly not to be found in our day of insolence,
arrogance, and ridiculous pride.
Benjamin asked his sister to draw a bottle of white
25
26 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
wine to drink with Cicero. His sister brought one
bottle, then two, then three, up to seven bottles.
"My dear sister, I beg of you, one more bottle."
"You wretch, don't you know this is the eighth
bottle already?"
"But my dear sister, we keep our accounts sepa-
rate."
"Remember, you are going on a journey."
"Just this last bottle, and I will start."
"A fine condition to start in! Suppose any one
should send for you now to visit a patient?"
"My dear sister, how little you appreciate the
good effects of wine ! It is easy to see that you never
drink anything but the limpid waters of Beuvron.
What if I do have to travel, my center of gravity
is always in the same place. If I have to bleed
some one By the way, sister, I ought to bleed
you. Machecourt advised it when he left. You
complained this morning of a severe headache. A
bleeding will do you good."
So saying, Benjamin took out his case of instru-
ments, and my grandmother armed herself with a
pair of tongs.
"The devil! You are a very rebellious patient.
Very well, let us compromise. I will not bleed you,
and you will go get us the eighth bottle of wine."
"I will not bring you a single glass."
"Then I will draw it myself," said Benjamin; and,
taking the bottle, he started for the cellar.
Seeing no better way of stopping him, my grand-
MY UNCLE MEETS AN OLD SERGEANT 27
mother seized his queue, but Benjamin paid not the
slightest attention to this, and walked to the cellar
as steadily as if there had been nothing more than
a bunch of onions hanging to his queue. He came
back with his bottle filled.
"My dear sister, it was well worth while for the
two of us to go to the cellar for a paltry bottle of
white wine; but I warn you, if you persist in these
bad habits, you will force me to cut off my queue."
A moment ago Benjamin had looked upon the
journey to Corvol as a disagreeable duty. Now he
insisted upon starting, and my grandmother, to pre-
vent him, locked his shoes up in a closet.
"I tell you, I am going."
"And I tell you, you are not going."
"Would you like me to drag you all the way to
M. Minxit's at the end of my queue?"
It was in the midst of this discussion that my
grandfather found the brother and sister when he
arrived. He put an end to it by announcing that he
had to go to La Chapelle the next day and would
take Benjamin, with him.
Grandfather was up before daylight. When he
had scribbled off his writ and noted at the end, "The
cost, six francs, four sous and six deniers,"-he wiped
his pen on his coat sleeve, carefully laid his spectacles
in their case, and went to wake Benjamin up. Ben-
jamin was sleeping like the Prince de Conde (that is,
if the Prince was not shamming sleep) on the eve of
a battle.
28 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
"Get up, get up, Benjamin. It's broad day-
light."
"You're wrong," answered Benjamin, turning to-
wards the wall with a grunt, "it is pitch dark."
"Raise your head, and you will see the sunlight on
the floor."
"That's the light from the street lamp."
"Oh, then you don't want to go?"
"No, I dreamt the whole night through of hard
bread and sour wine, and if we go, something bad
might happen."
"Very well, if you are not up in ten minutes, I
will send your dear sister to you. But, if you get
up, I will open that quarter-cask of old wine — you
know which."
"You're sure it's from Pouilly, aren't you?" said
Benjamin, sitting up in bed. "On your word of
honour?"
"Yes, on my word of honour as a summons-
server."
"Then go open your quarter-cask. But I warn
you, if anything happens on the way, it is you who
will have to answer for it to my dear sister."
An hour later my uncle and my grandfather were
on their way to Moulot. At some distance from the
town they met two peasant boys, one of whom was
carrying a rabbit under his arm and the other two
hens in a basket. The boy with the rabbit said to
the other one:
"If you tell M. Cliquet that my rabbit is a war-
MY UNCLE MEETS AN OLD SERGEANT 29
ren rabbit and you saw me get it from a trap, I
will make you my chum."
"All right, if you tell Madame Deby that my hens
lay twice a day and their eggs are as big as ducks'
eggs."
"You are two little thieves," said my grandfather.
"One of these days I will have your ears pulled by
the police officer."
"And I, my friends," said Benjamin, "beg you each
to accept this twelve-denier piece."
"Well, that is generosity well placed," said my
grandfather, shrugging his shoulders. "No doubt
you will bestow the flat of your sword on the first
honest poor man you come across if you throw your
money away on these two scamps."
"Scamps to you, Machecourt, who see nothing but
the outside of things. To me those boys are two
philosophers. They have just invented a machine,
which, if well organized, would make the fortune of
ten honest people."
"And what machine may that be," said my grand-
father with an air of incredulity, "which your two
philosophers have invented? I'd thrash the philoso-
phers soundly if we had time to stop."
"A simple machine," my uncle replied. "This is
how it works. There are ten of us. ten friends, who,
instead of meeting for breakfast, meet to make our
fortunes."
"At least something worth meeting for," inter-
rupted my grandfather.
30 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
"All ten of us are intelligent, skilful, even tricky,
if need be. We can assume a lofty tone and are fas-
cinating talkers. We play with words as cleverly as
a juggler plays with his balls. As for morality, we
are all capable in our professions; and well-meaning
persons may say, without seriously compromising
themselves, that we are the superiors of our col-
leagues. In a perfectly honourable spirit we form a
society for throwing each other bouquets, puffing
each other, and boosting our small deserts."
"I understand," said my grandfather. "One of
you sells rat poison and has nothing but a big drum,
the other, Swiss tea and has nothing but a pair of
cymbals. You pool your means of making a noise,
and "
"Exactly," interrupted Benjamin. "You see, if
the machine works properly, each of the members
has nine instruments around him that make a tre-
mendous noise.
"There are nine of us who say, 'Page the lawyer
drinks too much. But I believe the devil of a fellow
steeps the Nivernais code of laws in his wine and
then corks up his logic in bottles. He wins every case
he wants to. The other day he won large damages
for a nobleman because the nobleman had beaten a
peasant. The process-server, Parlanta, is a little
too cunning. But he is the Hannibal of process-serv-
ers. You can't escape his arrests for debt. A debtor
would have to be without a body to evade him. He
would not hesitate to lay his hands on a duke or a
MY UNCLE MEETS AN OLD SERGEANT 31
peer. As for Benjamin Rathery, he is an easy-going
fellow who makes fun of everything and laughs a
fever in the face. A man, if you will, of the dish and
the bottle. But it is for that very reason that I'd
rather call him in when I'm ill than anyone else. He
hasn't got the manner of those gloomy doctors whose
record is a cemetery. He is too gay and his di-
gestion is too good for a man who has many deaths
on his conscience. In this way each of the members
is multiplied by nine."
"Yes," said my grandfather, "but will that give
you nine red coats? Nine times Benjamin Rathery,
what does that make?"
"That makes nine hundred times Machecourt,"
Benjamin retorted like a flash. "But let me finish
my explanation. You can make your jokes after-
ward. Here are nine advertisements that insinuate
themselves everywhere, that to-morrow repeat under
another form what they have told you to-day; nine
placards that talk and catch passers-by by the arm;
nine signs that promenade through the town and dis-
cuss, and propound dilemmas and set up syllogisms
and make sport of you if you are not of their opinion.
"As a result, the reputations of Page and Rapin
and Rathery, till then dragging themselves along
painfully within the limits of the small town, like a
lawyer moving in a vicious circle, suddenly soar up-
ward. Yesterday they had no feet. To-day they
have wings. They expand like gas let out of a sealed
bottle. They spread throughout the province.
32 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
Clients stream to these people from all parts of the
bailiwick, from the south and the north and the
east and the west, like the elect in the Apocalypse
streaming into Jerusalem. At the end of five or six
years Benjamin Rathery is the possessor of a large
fortune, which he spends in luncheons and dinners
to the loud accompaniment of glasses and bottles.
You, Machecourt, are no longer a server of writs.
I buy you the office of bailiff. Your wife is covered
with silk and lace like an image of Our Lady. Your
oldest son, who is already a choir-boy, enters the
seminary. Your second son who is sickly and as yel-
low as a Canary bird, studies medicine. I make over
to him my good-will and my practise and keep him
in red coats. Of your younger son I make a lawyer.
Your older daughter marries a literary man and we
marry the younger one to a fat bourgeois, and the
day after the wedding we put the machine away in
the attic."
"Yes, but there is just one little flaw in your ma-
chine. Honest people can't use it."
"Why not?"
"Because."
"Because what?"
"Because the effect is immoral."
"Can you prove your immoral effect by premises
and conclusions?"
"Go away with your premises and conclusions.
You who are a scholar reason with your intellect.
I who am a poor process-server feel with my con-
MY UNCLE MEETS AN OLD SERGEANT 33
science. I maintain that any man who acquires a
fortune in any other way than by his own work and
his own talents does not come by it rightly."
"Excellent, Machecourt," cried my uncle, "you are
perfectly right. Conscience is the best logician, and
charlatanism, in whatever disguise, is a fraud always.
So we will break our machine and say no more about
it."
Chatting on in this way, they approached the vil-
lage of Moulot. A man looking something like a
soldier was sitting at the gate of a vineyard. He
was all framed in by blackberry bushes, which had
been browned and reddened by the frost and hung
about him like tousled hair. On his head was a piece
of a cocked hat without a cockade. His emaciated
face had a stony colour like the deep ivory of old
monuments long exposed to the sunlight. The two
halves of a huge white mustache encircled his mouth
like a parenthesis. He was dressed in an old uni-
form, and across one sleeve was an old, worn-out
strip of galloon.
The other sleeve, with the insignia gone, was noth-
ing but a rectangle showing a newer material and a
deeper shade than the rest of the garment. His bare
legs, swollen by the cold, were as red as beets. He
was moistening a piece of black bread with a few
drops of brandy from a gourd. A large poodle dog
was sitting in front of him, following all his move-
ments with the attentiveness of a deaf mute who lis-
tens to his master's orders with his eyes.
34 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
My uncle would rather have passed a tavern with-
out going in than have passed this man without stop-
ping to speak to him.
"My good man, that is a bad lunch you have
there," he said from the roadside.
UI have eaten many a worse one. But Fontenoy
and I have good appetites."
"Who is Fontenoy?"
"My dog. This one here."
"The devil ! A fine name for a dog. In fact, if
glory is good for kings, why should it not be good for
poodles?"
"That is his nom de guerre," continued the ser-
geant. "His real name is Azor."
"Why do you call him Fontenoy?"
"Because he took an English captain prisoner at
the battle of Fontenoy."
"Indeed? How did he do that?" exclaimed my
uncle, greatly amazed.
"Very simply — by hanging to one of his coat-tails,
until I could put my hand on his shoulder. Just as he
is, Fontenoy was given an army order, and had the
honour to be presented to Louis XV., who conde-
scended to say to me: 'Sergeant Duranton, that's a
fine dog of yours.' '
"A king courteous to animals. I am surprised
he did not bestow a title of nobility upon your
poodle. How is it you left the service of so good a
king?"
"Because they committed an injustice against me,"
MY UNCLE MEETS AN OLD SERGEANT 35
said the sergeant, his eyes lighting up and his nostrils
dilating with anger. "It's ten years since I've been
wearing these gold rags on my arms, and I have been
through all the campaigns of Morris of Saxony, and
I have more scars on my body than would be re-
quired for two periods of service. They promised
me the epaulets, but to make a weaver's son an of-
ficer would have been a scandal to make every hair
of every animal in the kingdom of France and Na-
varre stand on end in horror. So, over my head,
they promoted a chick of a knight just hatched from
the page's shell. He will find a way of getting killed.
They are brave, there is no denying that; but the man
doesn't know how to say Right-dress !"
At this word, uttered very emphatically, the poodle
turned his head to the right, military fashion.
"Fine, Fontenoy," said his master, "you forget
we have retired from the service." Then he went
on: "I could not forgive the very Christian king.
I have been on bad terms with him ever since; and
I asked him for my dismissal, which he graciously
granted."
"You did well, my brave fellow," cried Benjamin,
slapping the old soldier on the shoulder, an im-
prudent demonstration, for the poodle nearly ate
him up. "If my approval is of any value to you, I
give it to you without reserve. The nobles have
never stood in the way of my advancement, but that
does not keep me from hating them with my whole
heart and soul."
36 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
"In that case a purely Platonic hatred," inter-
rupted my grandfather.
"Say rather a purely philosophical hatred, Mache-
court. Of all absurd things, nobility is the most ab-
surd. It is a flagrant revolt of despotism against
the Creator. Did God make the grasses of the field
one higher than the other? Did he engrave escutch-
eons upon the wings of birds and the hides of beasts?
What do these superior men signify whom a king
makes by letters-patent as he licenses an exciseman
or a huckster? Dating from to-day, you will ac-
knowledge Mr. So-and-so as a superior man. Signed
'Louis XV.,' and lower down, 'Choiseul.' A fine
way of establishing superiority. A serf Is made- a
count by Henri IV. because he served his majesty
with a nice goose. Had he served a capon along
with the goose, he would have been made a mar-
quis, and not a bit more ink or parchment would
have been needed. Now the descendants of these
men have the privilege of beating us because our
ancestors never had the opportunity of offering a
fowl's wing to a king. Just see on what a little thing
greatness depends in this world! Had the goose
been cooked a bit too much or a bit too little, had it
been seasoned with one pinch of salt too much or too
little, had a speck of soot fallen into the dripping
pan or a tiny cinder on the slices of bread, had the
bird been served a moment too soon or too late,
there would have been one noble family the less in
France. And the people bow low to these great
MY UNCLE MEETS AN OLD SERGEANT 37
ones. Oh, I should like the same that Caligula
wanted of the Romans, that France had only a single
pair of cheeks to slap."
"But tell me, imbecile people, what value do you
find in the two letters that the nobles place in front
of their names ? Do they add an inch to their height ?
Have they more iron than you in their blood, more
brain matter inside their skulls? Can they handle a
heavier sword than yours? Does this marvellous de
cure scrofula? Does it safeguard its possessor
against the colic when he has dined too heavily, or
from intoxication when he has drunk too much?
Don't you see that all these counts, these barons,
these marquises are capital letters which, in spite of
the place they occupy in the line, don't help with
the spelling any more than the small letters? If a
duke and a peer and a woodcutter were alone to-
gether on an American prairie or in the middle of
Sahara, I should like to know which of them would
be the nobler.
"Their great-great-grandfather wielded the shield,
and your father made cotton caps. What does that
prove for them or against you? Do they come into
the world with their ancestor's shield at their side?
Have they his scars marked on their skin? What is
this greatness that is transmitted from father to son,
like a fresh candle lighted at a dying candle? Are
the mushrooms that spring up on the decayed wood
of a dead oak, oaks? When I hear that the king
has created a noble family, it is as though I were to
3 8 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
see a farmer planting in his field a great fool of a
poppy that will choke up twenty furrows with its
seed and yield nothing but four big red leaves a year.
Nevertheless, as long as there are kings, there will
be nobles. The kings make counts, marquises, dukes,
so that admiration should rise up to them by degrees.
Relatively to the kings the nobles are the small show
at the entrance which gives the idlers on the street a
foretaste of the magnificent spectacle inside. A king
without nobility would be a salon without an ante-
chamber. But this dainty ministering to their van-
ity will cost them dear. It is impossible that twenty
millions of men should forever consent to be noth-
ing in the state so that a few thousand courtiers may
be something. He who sows privileges will reap
revolutions.
"The time is not far off perhaps when all those
brilliant escutcheons will be dragged in the gutter,
and those who now adorn themselves with them will
need the protection of their valets."
"What," you say to me, "your uncle Benjamin
said all that?"
"Why not?"
"All in one breath?"
"To be sure. What is so surprising about it? My
grandfather had a jug that held a pint and a half,
and my uncle emptied it at one draught. He called it
making tirades."
"And his words? How were they pre-
served?"
MY UNCLE MEETS AN OLD SERGEANT 39
"My grandfather wrote them down."
"You mean to say he had writing material with
him there in the open country?"
"How stupid! Wasn't he a process-server?"
"And the sergeant? Did he have anything more
to say?"
"Certainly. He had to say something for my
uncle to reply to."
So then, the sergeant said:
"I have been tramping now for three months. I
go from farm to farm, and I stay as long as they
are willing to keep me. I drill with the children, I
tell the men the story of our campaigns, and Fonte-
noy amuses the women with his tricks. I never am in
a hurry because I never exactly know where I am
going. They send me back to my fireside, and I have
no fireside. My father's hearth was destroyed long
ago, and my arms are hollower and rustier than two
old gun-barrels. However, I think I shall go back
to my village. Not that I expect to be better off
there than anywhere else. The ground is as hard
there as elsewhere, and the roads there don't flow
with brandy. But what is the difference? I'll go
there anyway. It is a sort of sick man's whim. I
shall be the garrison of the neighbourhood. If they
won't support the old soldier, they will at least have
to bury him, and," he added, "they will certainly be
kind enough to place a little soup for Fontenoy on
my grave, until he dies of grief. For Fontenoy will
not let me go away alone. That's the promise he
40 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
makes me when we are alone and he looks at me.
My good Fontenoy."
"So that is the fate they have prepared for you?"
answered Benjamin. "Truly, kings are the most self-
ish of beings. If the serpents that our poets speak
so ill of had a literature, they would make kings the
symbol of ingratitude. I somewhere read that after
God made the heart of kings a dog ran off with it,
and not wishing to do his work over again, he put
a stone in its place. That seems to me very likely.
As for the Capets, perhaps they have an onion in
place of a heart. I defy anyone to prove the con-
trary.
"Because these people had a cross made on their
foreheads with oil, their persons are august, they are
majesties, they are we instead of I. They can do
no wrong. Should their valets de chambre happen
to scratch them putting on their shirts, it would be a
sacrilege. Their little ones are highnesses, these
tots, which a woman carries in her hand, and whose
cradle could be put in a hen-coop. They are very
high heights, most serene mountains. We would
gladly gild their nurses' nipples. If such is the effect
of a little oil, how much we ought to respect the
anchovies that are pickled in oil till we eat
them!
"In the cast of kings and emperors, pride goes to
the point of madness. They are compared to Jupi-
ter holding a thunder-bolt, and they do not consider
themselves too highly honoured by the comparison.
MY UNCLE MEETS AN OLD SERGEANT 41
Leave out the thunder-bolt, and they would be of-
fended. Nevertheless, Jupiter has the gout, and it
takes two lackeys to lead him to table or to bed.
The rhymester Boileau on his own authority ordered
the winds to keep quiet because he was going to speak
of Louis XIV. :
'Be silent, O ye winds,
Of Louis I shall speak.'
"And Louis XIV. saw nothing except what was
quite natural in this. Only it never occurred to him
to bid the commanders of his vessels speak of Louis
in order to still the tempests.
"All these poor madmen believe that the extent of
earth over which they reign is theirs, and God gave
it to Count Odo of Paris, soil and sub-soil, to be en-
joyed, without disturbance or hindrance, by him and
his descendants. If a courier tells them that God
made the Seine for the express purpose of feeding
the great fountain of the Tuileries, they will con-
sider him a man of intelligence. They look upon the
millions of men around them as their property, the
title to which cannot be disputed on the penalty of
hanging. Some come into the world to furnish
them with money, some to die in their quarrels, and
some with the clearest and reddest blood, to beget
mistresses for them. All this evidently because an
old archbishop, with his trembling hand, made the
sign of the cross on their brows.
"They take a man in the heydey of youth, put
42 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
a gun in his hands and a knapsack on his back, stick
a cockade on his cap and say to him: 'My brother
of Prussia has wronged me. You are to attack all
his subjects. I have warned them by my process-
server, whom I call a herald, that on the first of
April next you will have the honour to present your-
self at the frontier to cut their throats and they
should be ready to welcome you properly. Between
monarchs these are considerations that one owes the
other. At first sight you may think our enemies are
men. I warn you, they are Prussians. You can tell
them from human beings by the colour of their uni-
forms. Try to do your duty well, for I shall be
there sitting on my throne watching you. If you
bring back victory when you return to France, you
will be led beneath the windows of my palace. I
will appear in full uniform and say: 'Soldiers, I am
satisfied with you.' If you are one hundred thousand
men, you will have a hundred-thousandth of these
six words for your share. In case you should remain
on the battlefield, which may very well happen, I
will send your family the death certificate, so that
they may mourn you, and that brothers may inherit
your property. If you lose an arm or a leg, I will
pay you what they are worth, but if you have the
good or the ill fortune, whichever you may think it,
to escape the bullet, and you no longer have the
strength to carry your knapsack, I will dismiss you,
and you can go die where you like. I have no fur-
ther interest in the matter."
MY UNCLE MEETS AN OLD SERGEANT 43
"Exactly," said the sergeant, "When they have
extracted the phosphorus of which they make their
glory from our blood they throw us aside the way the
wine-grower throws the grape skin on the muck-
heap, after he has pressed out the juice, or the way
a child throws the pit of the fruit he has just eaten
into the gutter."
"That is very wrong of them," said Machecourt
whose mind was at Corvol, and who was eager to
see his brother-in-law.
"Machecourt," said Benjamin, looking at him as-
kance, "choose your expressions better. This is no
laughing matter. Really, when I see these valiant
soldiers, whose blood has made the glory of their
country, obliged to spend the rest of their life in a
cobbler's hole of a workshop, like poor old Cicero:
while a multitude of gilded puppets snatch up all the
taxes, and prostitutes have cashmere for their morn-
ing wrappers, a single one of which is worth the en-
tire wardrobe of a poor housewife, I am furious at
kings. If I were God, I would make them wear a
uniform of lead, and condemn them to a thousand
years of military service in the moon, with all their
iniquities in their knapsacks. I'd make the emperors
be corporals."
On recovering his breath and wiping his brow —
for his feelings and his indignation had put my
worthy great-uncle into a sweat — he took my grand-
father aside and said:
"What do you say to our having this brave man
44 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
and his glorious poodle breakfast with us at Ma*
nette's?"
"Hem! Ahem!" objected my grandfather.
"The devil!" replied Benjamin. "It isn't every
day you meet a poodle who has taken an English cap*
tain prisoner; and every day political banquets are
given to persons worth less than this honourable
beast."
"But have you any money?" said my grandfather.
"I have only a thirty-sou piece that your sister gave
me this morning because, I believe, it isn't stamped
right, and she impressed upon me to bring her back
at least half of it."
"I haven't a single sou, but I am Manette's physi-
cian, and she from time to time is my landlady, and
we give each other credit."
"Nothing more than Manette's physician?"
"What's that to you?"
"Nothing. But I warn you I shan't stay at Ma-
nette's more than an hour."
So my uncle extended his invitation to the ser-
geant. He accepted without ceremony, and joyfully
placed himself between my uncle and my grand-
father, walking in what soldiers call lock-step.
They met a bull being driven to pasture by a peas-
ant. Irritated, no doubt, by Benjamin's coat, he
made a lunge at him. My uncle dodged his horns,
and, having joints like springs of steel, he bounded
across a broad ditch separating the road from the
field with as little effort as if he had been taking a
MY UNCLE MEETS AN OLD SERGEANT 45
dance step. The bull, evidently eager to rip up the
red coat, tried to imitate my uncle, but landed in
the middle of the ditch. "Good enough for you !"
said Benjamin. "That's what you get by seeking a
quarrel with people who are not thinking of you."
But the beast, as obstinate as a Russian mounting to
an assault, was not discouraged. Planting his hoofs
in the half-thawed ground, he tried to climb the slope.
Thereupon, my uncle drew his sword, and did his
best to prick the enemy's snout. He called to the
peasant: "My good man, stop your beast; else I
shall have to put my sword through his body." But,
so saying, he let his sword fall into the ditch. "Take
off your coat, and throw it to him as quickly as you
can," cried Machecourt. "Hide among the vines,"
said the peasant. "Sic him! Sic him, Fontenoy!"
said the sergeant. The poodle leaped at the bull,
and, as if knowing whom he had to deal with, bit
him on the ham-string. The bull then turned his
wrath against the dog; and, while he was thrusting
his horns furiously this way and that, the peasant
came up and succeeded in passing a noose around his
hind legs. This skilful manoeuver met with complete
success and put an end to the hostilities.
Benjamin returned to the road. He thought
Machecourt was going to laugh at him, but Mache-
couFt was as pale as a sheet and his legs were tremb-
ling.
"Come, Machecourt, brace up," said my uncle,
"else I shall have to bleed you. As for you, my
46 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
brave Fontenoy, you made a prettier fable to-day
than the one by La Fontaine entitled 'The Dove and
the Ant.' You see, gentlemen, a good deed is never
lost. Generally the giver is obliged to allow long
credit to the debtor. But Fontenoy has paid me in
advance. Who the devil would have thought I
should ever be under obligations to a poodle?"
Moulot is hidden among a clump of willows and
poplars on the left bank of the Beuvron stream, at
the foot of a big hill, into which the road to La
Chapelle cuts. A few houses of the village had al-
ready gone up by the side of the road, as white and
as spick and span as peasant women dressed for the
fairs. Among them was Manette's wine-shop. At
sight of the frost-covered sign hanging from ths
attic-window, Benjamin began to sing in his sten-
torian voice:
"Friends, here we must come to a halt,
I see the shadow of a dram-shop."
On hearing this familiar voice, Manette ran to the
doorway, blushing.
Manette was really a very pretty person, plump,
chubby-cheeked and fair, but perhaps a little too
pink. Her cheeks were like a pool of milk with a
few drops of wine floating on the surface.
"Gentlemen," said Benjamin, "permit me first of
all to kiss our pretty hostess as part payment in ad-
vance for the good lunch she is going to give us
MY UNCLE MEETS AN OLD SERGEANT 47
"Oh, come, Monsieur Rathery!" exclaimed Ma-
nette, retreating. "You are not made for peasant
women. Go and kiss Mademoiselle Minxit."
"It seems rumours of my marriage have already
spread through the country," my uncle thought. "No
one but M. Minxit can have spoken of it. Hence he
must be anxious to have me for a son-in-law. So, if
he should not receive my visit to-day, that would not
be a reason for breaking off the negotiations."
"Manette," he said, "Mademoiselle Minxit is not
in question here. Have you any fish?"
"Fish?" said Manette. "There are plenty in M.
Minxit's pond."
"Manette, I ask you again," said Benjamin, "have
you any fish? Be careful what answer you give me."
"Well," said Manette, "my husband has gone fish-
ing, and he will soon return."
"Soon does not interest us. Put as many slices
of ham on the gridiron as it will hold, and make us
an omelette of all the eggs in your hen-house."
The lunch was soon ready. While the ome-
lette was leaping in the frying-pan, the ham was
broiling on the iron. Scarcely was the omelette
served than it was already consumed. It takes a
hen six months to lay twelve eggs, a woman a quar-
ter of an hour to convert the twelve eggs into an ome-
lette, and three men five minutes to devour the ome-
lette. "See," said Benjamin, "how much faster tear-
ing down goes on than building up. Land where
there is a large population grows poorer every day.
48 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
Man is a greedy child who wears his nurse away.
The ox does not restore to the fields all the grass he
takes from it. The ashes of the oak that we burn
do not return to the forest as an oak. The breezes
do not carry back to the rose-bush the leaves of the
bouquet that the maiden scatters around her. The
candle burning in front of us does not fall back on
the ground in waxen dew. Rivers continually rob
the continents of soil and deposit it in the bosom of
the sea. Most of the mountains have no verdure
left on their big bald skulls. The Alps expose their
bare, jagged bones. The interior of Africa is noth-
ing but a sea of sand. Spain is a vast steppe, and
Italy a great charnel-house with only a bed of ashes
remaining. Wherever great peoples have passed,
they have left sterility in their tracks. This earth,
adorned with leaves and flowers, is a consumptive
with red cheeks whose days are numbered. A time
will come when it will be nothing but an inert, dead,
icy mass, a great tombstone on which God will write :
'Here lies the human race.' Meanwhile, gentlemen,
let us enjoy the blessings the earth gives us, and, as
she is a tolerably good mother, let us drink to her
long life."
Next came the ham. My grandfather ate from a
sense of duty, because a man must eat to be strong,
and must have blood to be able to serve writs. Ben-
jamin ate for amusement. But the sergeant ate like
a man who sits down to table for no other purpose,
and he did not utter a word,
MY UNCLE MEETS AN OLD SERGEANT 49
At table Benjamin was a great man; but his noble
stomach was not free from jealousy, that
base passion which dims the most brilliant
qualities.
He watched the sergeant with the thwarted air of
a man who has been excelled, as Cassar might have
looked on from the Capitol at Bonaparte winning
the battle of Marengo. After contemplating his
man for some time in silence, he thought fit to address
these words to him:
"Drinking and eating are two beings that resemble
each other. At first sight you would take them for
first cousins. But drinking is as much above eating
as the eagle who alights upon the mountain peak is
above the crow who perches on the tree-top. Eating
is a necessity of the stomach; drinking is a necessity
of the soul. Eating is only a common workman;
drinking is an artist. Drinking inspires poets with
jolly ideas, philosophers with noble thoughts, musi-
cians with melodious airs. Eating gives them noth-
ing but cramps. Now, sergeant, I flatter myself I
know how to drink as well as you — even better, I be-
lieve. But, when it comes to eating, I am a bungler
next to you. You could cope with Arthus in per-
son. I even think that on a turkey you could go
him a wing better."
"That's because I eat for yesterday, to-day, and to-
morrow."
"Then permit me to serve you with this last slice
of ham for day after-to-morrow,"
50 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
"Thank you very much," said the sergeant, "there
is an end to everything."
"Well, the Creator who has caused soldiers to pass
suddenly from extreme abundance to extreme want
has given to them, as he has to the camel, two
stomachs. Their second stomach is their knapsack.
Put this ham in your knapsack. Neither Machecourt
nor I want it."
"No," said the soldier, "I don't have to lay up
provisions. I always get food enough. But permit
me to offer this ham to Fontenoy. We are in the
habit of sharing everything, feast days as well as
fast days."
"Your dog really does deserve to be well taken
care of," said my uncle. "Will you sell him to me?"
"Monsieur!" exclaimed the sergeant, quickly put-
ting his hand on his poodle.
"I beg pardon, my brave man, I beg pardon.
Sorry to have offended you. I was only joking. I
know asking a poor man to sell his dog is like pro-
posing to a mother to sell her child."
"You will never make me believe," said my grand-
father, "that one can love a dog as much as a child.
I once had a poodle, too, a match to yours, sergeant
— without offense to Fontenoy — except that the only
thing that he ever took prisoner was the tax-collec-
tor's wig. Well, one day, when lawyer Page was
dining with me, he ran off with a calf's head, and
that very night I passed him under the mill-wheel."
"What you say proves nothing. You have a wife
MY UNCLE MEETS AN OLD SERGEANT 51
and six children — quite enough of a task for you to
love them all without forming a romantic affection
for a poodle. But I am talking of a poor devil alone
among men and with no relative but his dog. Put a
man with a dog on a desert island and a woman with
her child on another desert island, and I will wager
that in six months the man will love the dog if the
dog is at all lovable, as well as the woman will love
her child."
"I can conceive," answered my grandfather, "that
a traveler would take a dog along for company, or an
old woman alone in her room would keep a pug to
talk to all day. But that a man should love a dog
with real affection, that he should love him as a
Christian, I deny. It's impossible."
"And I tell you that under certain circumstances
you would love even a rattlesnake. The loving fiber
in man cannot remain inactive. The human soul
abhors a vacuum. Study the most hardened egoist
carefully, and you will find an affection tucked away
in a fold of his soul, like a little flower among the
stones.
"It is a general rule, and without exception, that
man must love something. The dragoon who has
no mistress loves his horse. The young girl who has
no lover loves her bird. The prisoner, who cannot
in decency love his jailer, loves the spider that spins
its web in the window of his cell, or the fly that comes
down to him in a ray of sunlight. When we find
nothing animate to expend our affections upon, we
52 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
love mere matter, a ring, a snuff-box, a tree, a flower.
The Dutchman has a passion for his tulips, and the
antiquary for his cameos."
Just then Manette's husband came in with a fat
eel in his basket.
"Machecourt," said Benjamin, "it is noon, that is,
dinner-time. What do you say to our making a din-
ner of this eel?"
"It is time to go," said Machecourt, "and we are
going to dine at M. Minxit's."
"And you, sergeant? What do you say to our
eating this eel?"
"For my part," said the sergeant, "I am in no
hurry. As I am not going anywhere in particular,
I arrive at my destination every night."
"Very well said! And the respectable poodle,
what is his opinion on the subject?"
The poodle looked at Benjamin and wagged his
tail twro or three times.
"Good. Silence gives consent. So, Machecourt,
there are three of us against your one. You must
yield to the will of the majority. You see, my friend,
the majority is stronger than all the world. Put ten
philosophers on one side and eleven fools on the
other, and the fools will carry the day."
"The eel is indeed a very fine one," said my grand-
father, "and, if Manette has a little fresh lard, she
can make an excellent dish of it. But, the devil!
what about my writ? I must perform my office."
"Look here," said Benjamin. "It will undoubtedly
MY UNCLE MEETS AN OLD SERGEANT 53
be necessary for some one to lend me his arm to es-
cort me back to Clamecy. If you shirk this pious
duty, I will disown you as my brother-in-law."
Since Machecourt set store on being Benjamin's
brother-in-law, he remained.
When the eel was ready, they sat down at table
again. Manette's dish was a masterpiece. The ser-
geant could not admire it enough. But a cook's mas-
terpieces are ephemeral. We scarcely give them
time to cool. There is only one thing in the arts that
can be compared to culinary products — the products
of journalism. But even a stew can be warmed over,
a pate de fole gras may last a whole month, a ham
may see its admirers gather about it many times.
But a newspaper article has no to-morrow. Before
we reach the end, we have forgotten the beginning,
and when we have glanced through it, we throw it on
our desk, as we throw our napkin on the table after
dinner is over. I cannot understand how a man of
literary ability can consent to waste his talents in
obscure journalistic work; how a man who might
write on parchment can make up his mind to scribble
on the blotting-paper of a journal. Certainly it must
give him no slight pang to see the leaves upon which
he has placed his thought fall noiselessly with those
thousand other leaves which the immense tree of the
press shakes from its branches daily.
While my uncle was philosophising, the hand of
the cuckoo clock kept moving on and on. Benjamin
did not notice it was dark until Manette put a lighted
54 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
candle on the table. Then, without waiting for the
observations of Machecourt, who for that matter was
scarcely in a condition to observe anything, he de-
clared they had had enough for one day, and it was
time to return to Clamecy.
The sergeant and my grandfather went out first.
Manette stopped my uncle at the threshold.
"Monsieur Rathery," said she, "see here."
"What is this scrawl?" said my uncle. ' 'August
10, three bottles of wine with a cream cheese; Sept-
ember i, nine bottles and fish with M. Page.' God
forgive me, I believe it is a bill."
"To be sure," said Manette. "I see it is time to
balance our accounts, and I hope you will send me
your bill soon."
"I, Manette, I have no bill against you. Faith !
Rather a hard task to touch the round white arm of
a pretty woman like you."
"You're making fun of me, Monsieur Rathery,"
said Manette, thrilling with delight.
"I say it because it is true, because I think it. As
for your bill, my poor Manette, it comes at a bad
time. I confess I haven't a penny just now. But
here is my watch. Keep it until I have paid you.
This is quite — convenient. It hasn't been going since
yesterday."
Manette began to cry, and tore her bill to bits.
My uncle kissed her on her cheek, her forehead,
her eyes, wherever he could find a place to kiss.
"Benjamin," Manette whispered in his ear, lean-
MY UNCLE MEETS AN OLD SERGEANT 55
ing toward him, "if you need money, tell me."
"No, no, Manette," my uncle answered quickly,
"I don't need your money. The devil ! That would
be a pretty state of things — to make you pay for the
happiness you give me ! Why, that would be an in-
dignity. I should be as vile as a prostitute!" And
he covered Manette with kisses again.
"Oho ! Don't feel embarrassed, Monsieur Rath-
ery," said Jean-Pierre, entering.
"What, you've been here, Jean-Pierre? You're
not jealous, are you ? I warn you, I have a profound
aversion for jealous people."
"I think I have a good right to be jealous."
"Imbecile ! You always see things contrary.
These gentlemen have charged me to show your wife
their satisfaction at the excellent meal she gave us,
and I was fulfilling the commission."
"It seems to me you have one good way of showing
your satisfaction, and that is by paying your bill. Do
you understand?"
"In the first place, Jean-Pierre, we have nothing
to do with you. Manette is mistress here. As for
paying you, rest easy. That's my affair. You know
no one ever loses anything by me. Besides, if you are
afraid of waiting too long, I will run my sword
through your body this instant. Does that suit you,
Jean-Pierre?"
Here my Uncle Benjamin went out.
Up to this time he had only been over-excited.
All the elements of intoxication were in him without
56 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
his yet being drunk. But outside the wine-shop, the
cold clutched at his brain and his legs.
"Hello, there, Machecourt, where are you?"
"Here I am, holding on to your coat."
"You holding on to me? That's good. You
honour me, you flatter me. By that you mean to say
that I am in a condition to support upright both my
personality and yours. At another time, yes. But
now I am as weak as any man who has dined too
long. I have engaged your arm beforehand. I
order you to offer it to me."
"At another time, yes," said Machecourt. "But
there's a hitch; I cannot walk either."
"Then you have acted dishonourably. You have
failed in the most sacred of duties. I reserved your
arm. You were to save yourself for both of us. But
I forgive you your weakness. Homo sum. That is
to say, I forgive you on one condition : that you go
right away and get the town constable and two peas-
ants with torches to escort me back to Clamecy. You
can take one of the constable's arms, and I will take
the other."
"But the constable has only one arm," said my
grandfather.
"Then the sound arm belongs to me. The only
thing I can do for you is to allow you to hang on to
my queue. Only take care not to untie the ribbon.
Or, if you prefer, ride on the poodle's back."
"Gentlemen," said the sergeant, "why go to a
distance to look for what is close at hand? I have
MY UNCLE MEETS AN OLD SERGEANT 57
two sound arms, that the bullets have fortunately
spared. I place them at your service."
"You are a brave man, sergeant," said my uncle,
taking the old soldier's right arm.
"An excellent man," said my grandfather, taking
his left arm.
"I will look out for your future, sergeant."
"And I, too, sergeant, I take upon myself the same
task, although, to tell the truth, any task at the pres-
ent moment "
"I will teach you how to pull teeth, sergeant."
"And I will teach your poodle to be a bailiff's as-
sistant."
"In three months you will be able to do tricks at
the fairs."
"In three months your poodle, if he behaves him-
self, will be able to earn thirty sous a day."
"The sergeant can begin by practising on you,
Machecourt. You have some decayed old stumps
that bother you. We will pull one out every other
day so as not to wear you out, and when we have
finished with the stumps, we will pull out your
gums."
"And I will put my bailiff's assistant at the service
of your creditors, Monsieur Debtor, and I may as
well tell you in advance what your duties toward him
will be. In the morning you must give him bread and
cheese, or a bunch of little radishes in season. For
dinner, soup and boiled beef, and for supper a roast
and a salad, or a glass of wine instead of the salad.
5 8 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
You will have to take care that he does not pine
away, for nothing does so much honour to a debtor
as a good fat keeper. He, for his part, must behave
properly toward you. He has no right to disturb
you in your occupations, like playing the clarinet, or
sounding the hunting horn."
"For the time being I offer the sergeant shelter at
home. You do not disapprove, do you, Mache-
court?"
"Not exactly, but I very much fear me your dear
sister will disown you."
"Ah, gentlemen," said the sergeant, "let us under-
stand each other. Do not expose me to insult. One
or the other of you will have to answer for it."
"Rest easy, sergeant," said my uncle. "If anyone
should offer you insult, turn to me. Machecourt
doesn't know how to fight, except when his ad-
versary gives him the sword and keeps the scab-
bard."
Thus philosophising, they reached the house. My
grandfather was not anxious to enter first, and my
uncle preferred to enter second.
To settle the matter, they entered together, knock-
ing against each other like two gourds carried at the
end of a stick.
The sergeant and the poodle, whose intrusion
made the cat growl like a Bengal tigress, brought up
the rear.
"My dear sister," said Benjamin, "I have the hon-
our to present to you a pupil in surgery and a "
MY UNCLE MEETS AN OLD SERGEANT 59
"Benjamin is talking nonsense," interrupted my
grandfather. "Don't listen to him. Monsieur is a
soldier whom we have been ordered to give a lodg-
ing to. We met him outside the door."
My grandmother was a good woman, but some-
thing of a shrew. She thought it added to her im-
portance to talk very loud. She wanted badly to
get angry, and all the more so because she had a
perfect right to. But she prided herself on her good
breeding, as the descendant of a lawyer, and the
presence of a stranger restrained her.
She offered the sergeant some supper. He de-
clined and for good reason, and she told one of her
children to take him to the tavern nearby, and order
breakfast to be given him in the morning before he
left.
When my grandfather, good, peaceable man that
he was, saw a conjugal tempest brewing, he always
bent like a reed; which weakness was excusable in a
degree, since he was always in the wrong.
He had seen the clouds gathering on his wife's
knitted brow, and the sergeant had hardly crossed
the threshold, when he, at his bed, scrambled into it
as best he could. As for Benjamin, he was incapable
of such cowardice. A sermon in five points, like a
game of ecarte, would not have sent him to bed a
minute before his time. He was willing to let his
sister scold him, but he was not willing to fear her.
He awaited the tempest that was about to burst with
the indifference of a rock, his hands in his pockets
60 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
and his back resting against the mantel-piece, while
he hummed :
"Marlbrough has gone to war,
Diddledee, diddledee-dum.
Marlbrough has gone to war.
Who knows if back he'll come?"
My grandmother conducted the sergeant to the
door, then, impatient for the fray, she turned and
confronted Benjamin.
"Well, Benjamin, are you satisfied with your day's
work? You're feeling good, aren't you? Shall I
draw a bottle of white wine for you?"
"Thank you, dear sister. As you have so elegantly
said, my day's work is done."
"A fine day's work, indeed! It would take many
like it to pay your debts. Have you sense enough
left at least to tell me how M. Minxit received
you?"
"Diddledee, diddlee-dum, dear sister," said Ben-
jamin.
"Ah! Diddledee, diddlee-dum," cried my grand-
mother. "You wait! I'll diddlee-dum you."
She seized the tongs and my uncle took three steps
backward and drew his sword.
"Dear sister," said he, putting himself on guard,
"I shall hold you responsible for all the blood that
is about to be shed here."
But my grandmother, though descended from a
lawyer, had no fear of a sword. She dealt her
MY UNCLE MEETS AN OLD SERGEANT 61
brother a blow with the tongs that struck him on the
thumb and made him drop his sword.
Benjamin danced about the room, squeezing his
wounded thumb in his left hand. My grandfather,
although the kindest of men, was suffocating with
laughter under the bed-clothes. He could not help
saying to my uncle :
"Well, how did you like that thrust? This time
you had both the scabbard and the sword. You can-
not say the weapons were not equal."
"Alas, no, Machecourt, they were not equal. I
ought to have had the shovel. All the same, your
wife — I can no longer say dear sister — deserves to
wear a pair of tongs at her side instead of a distaff.
With a pair of tongs she would win battles. I am
conquered, I confess, and I must submit to the law
of the conqueror. Well, no, we did not go to Cor-
vol. We stopped at Manette's."
"Always at Manette's, a married woman! Aren't
you ashamed of such conduct, Benjamin?"
"Ashamed! Why, dear sister? When a landlady
gets married, mayn't one eat at her place any more?
That's not the way I look at it. To a true philoso-
pher an inn has no sex. Isn't that so, Machecourt?"
"When I meet her at market, your Manette, I
will treat her, shameless creature that she is, as she
deserves."
"Dear sister, when you meet Manette at market,
buy as many cream cheeses as you like from her, but
if you insult her "
62 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
(Veil, if I insult her, what will you do?"
"I will leave you, I will go away to the islands
and take Machecourt with me, I warn you."
My grandmother realised that her transports of
anger would end in nothing, and forthwith made up
her mind to a certain course of action.
"Now do what that drunkard over there in bed
did," said she. "You need to lie down as much as
he. But to-morrow I myself will take you to M.
Minxit's, and we shall see if you will stop on the
way."
"Diddledee, diddledee-dum," hummed Benjamin,
going off to bed.
The idea of the step he was to take the next day
disturbed my uncle's slumbers, usually so peaceful
and profound. He dreamed aloud, and this is what
he said:
"You say, sergeant, that you dined like a king.
That's not the word. You put it too weakly. You
have dined better than an emperor. Kings and em-
perors, for all their power, are unequal to anything
extra, and you had something extra. You see, ser-
geant, everything is relative. That dish of fish was
certainly not worth a truffled partridge. Neverthe-
less, it tickled the nerves of your palate more agree-
ably than a truffled partridge would tickle the king's.
Why? Because his majesty's palate is blase in the
matter of truffles, whereas yours is not accustomed
to fish.
"My dear sister says to me, 'Benjamin, do some-
MY UNCLE MEETS AN OLD SERGEANT 63
thing to get rich. Benjamin, marry Mademoiselle
Minxit so as to have a fine dowry.' What good
would that do me? Does the butterfly take the
trouble to build a nest for the sake of the two or
three months of fine days that are the span of its
life? I am convinced that enjoyments are relative to
position, and that at the end of the year the beggar
and the rich man have had the same sum of happi-
ness.
uEach individual becomes accustomed to his situa-
tion, good or bad. The cripple no longer notices
that he walks with a crutch, or the rich man that he
rides in a carriage. The wretched snail that carries
his house on his back enjoys his day of perfume and
sunshine as much as the bird chirping overhead on
the branch. The thing to be considered is not the
cause, but the effect that the cause produces. Does
not the day labourer resting on his bench in front of
his cottage feel as good as the king on the eider-down
cushions of his armchair? Does not cabbage soup
taste as good to the peasant as crab chowder to the
king? And does not the beggar sleep as well in the
straw as the fine lady behind silk curtains and under
perfumed coverlets? The child who finds a sou is
happier than the banker who finds a louis, and the
peasant who inherits an acre of land is as triumphant
as the king whose armies conquer a province and
who has his people offer up a Te Deum.
"Every evil here below is balanced by a good,
and every good that parades itself is weakened by an
64 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
invisible evil. God has a thousand ways of making
compensations. If he gives one man good dinners,
he gives another man a somewhat better appetite,
and that restores the equilibrium. He gives the rich
man the fear of losses and the worry over preserv-
ing his property. To the beggar he gives freedom
from care. In sending us into this place of exile he
has put upon us all an almost equal burden of misery
and well-being. Any other arrangement would have
been unjust, for all men are his children.
"And why, as a matter of fact, should the rich man
be happier than the poor man? He doesn't work.
Very well. But there he misses the pleasure of rest-
ing from work.
"He has fine clothes. But the enjoyment from
them is with those who look at him. When the
church-warden dresses iip a saint, does he do it for
the saint or for the saint's worshippers? And isn't a
hump-back as much of a hump-back under a velvet
gown as under jean overalls?
"The rich man has two, three, four, ten servants.
My God! Why so proudly add this quantity of
useless members to one's body, when the four at-
tached to it perform all its functions? The man ac-
customed to service is a miserable cripple, who has
to be fed.
"The rich man has a house in the city and a villa
in the country. But of what use is the villa when the
owner is in the house, or the house when he is in the
villa? Of what use are the twenty rooms of his
MY UNCLE MEETS AN OLD SERGEANT 65
dwellings, when he can occupy only one room at a
time?
"His villa is set in a large park, surrounded by a
stone wall ten feet high, where he can go walking
and dream. But suppose he has no dreams? And,
besides, isn't the open country, with only the horizon
to wall it in and belonging to everybody, as beautiful
as his grand park?
"The sickly, greenish thread of an artificial
stream drags itself through the park, with broad
water-lily leaves sticking to it like cakes of plaster.
Isn't the river that flows through the open country
cleaner, hasn't it more of a current than the park
stream?
"Dahlias of one hundred and fifty varieties line
the rich man's walks. All right. I'll add four to
the hundred; which makes one hundred and fifty-
six varieties. But is not the elm-shaded road that
winds like a snake through the grassy fields as good
as his walks? And the hedges festooned with wild
roses and sprinkled with hawthorn, the hedges with
their bright foliage waving in the wind, scattering
flowers by the wayside — aren't they quite the equal
of those dahlias which no one can appreciate except
the horticulturist?
"The park belongs to the rich m?n exclusively,
you say. You are mistaken. It is only the pur-
chase deed locked up in his secretary that he owns
exclusively, and that only in case the worms don't
eat it.
66 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
"His park belongs to him much less than it does
to the birds that build their nests there, or to the
rabbits that browse amid the wild thyme, or the
insects that rustle in the leaves.
"Can his forester keep the snake from coiling in
the grass, or the toad from nestling on the moss?
"The rich man gives festivities. But are not the
dances under the old lindens of the promenade to
the sound of the bag-pipe also festivities?
"The rich man has a carriage. He has a car-
riage, the unfortunate ! Why, is he a cripple? There
is a woman carrying one child in her arms, while
another gambols about her, chasing after the butter-
flies and picking flowers. Which of the two worms
is better off? A carriage! But a carriage is an
infirmity. Let a wheel break, or a horse cast a shoe,
and there you are a cripple. Those grandees who,
in the time of Louis XIV., had themselves carried
to the ball-room on a litter, poor people who had
legs to dance with and none to walk with — how
much they must have suffered from the fatigue of
those who carried them!
"You think riding in a carriage is enjoyment to
the rich man. Not a bit. It's only a sort of slavery
that his vanity imposes upon him. If it weren't, why
should this gentleman and this lady, who are as
thin as a bundle of thorns and whom a donkey could
carry with the greatest ease, harness four horses to
their coach?
"For my part, when I am on the sward ankle-
MY UNCLE MEETS AN OLD SERGEANT 67
deep in moss, or wandering along with my hands in
my pockets, dreaming, the blue smoke from my
blackened pipe trailing behind me like a shade from
the underworld; or when, in the exquisite moon-
light, I stride along the white road, shadowed by
the hedges, I should like to see anyone dare to offer
me a carriage."
Here my uncle awoke.
"What," you say, "your uncle dreamed all that?
And out loud?"
Why, what's so surprising in that? Did not
Madam George Sand have the reverend father
Spiridion dream a whole chapter of one of her nov-
els out loud? And didn't M. Golbery dream aloud
for a whole hour in the Chamber about a proposition
on the report of the parliamentary debates? And
we ourselves, have we not been dreaming for the
last thirteen years that we made a revolution? When
my uncle had no time during the day to philoso-
phise, he made up by philosophising in his dreams.
That is how I explain the phenomenon I have just
told you about.
CHAPTER IV
HOW MY UNCLE PASSED HIMSELF OFF FOR THE
WANDERING JEW
MEANWHILE my grandmother put on her dove-
coloured silk dress, which she took from her drawer
only on solemn and festive occasions. She tied her
round cap on with the finest of her ribbons, cerise-
coloured and as broad as one's hand and broader.
She got ready her cloak of black taffeta trimmed
with black lace and took her new lynx muff out of its
box, a present from Benjamin on her birthday. He
still owed for it. When finished dressing up, she
ordered one of her children to go hire M. Durand's
donkey, a fine little animal, which had cost three
pistoles, at the last fair at Billy, and was let for
thirty-six deniers more than ordinary donkeys.
Then she called Benjamin. When he came down,
M. Durand's donkey was fastened before the door
eating his provender of bran out of a basket set on
a chair. A large, pure white pillow was laid between
the two baskets slung across his back.
Benjamin first inquired anxiously whether Mache-
court was there to drink a glass of white wine with
him. His sister told him he had gone out.
68
MY UNCLE AS THE WANDERING JEW 69
"Then I hope, my good sister, that you will be
friendly enough to take a little glass of cordial with
me." For my uncle's stomach knew how to accom-
modate itself to all stomachs.
My grandmother did not dislike cordial, on the
contrary, she was very fond of it. So she accepted
Benjamin's invitation, and permitted him to get the
decanter. Then after admonishing my father, who
was the oldest child, not to beat his brothers, and
telling Premoins, who was ill, to ask for anything
he needed, and assigning to Surgie a piece of knitting
to be done, my grandmother mounted the donkey.
Long live the earth and the sun ! The neighbours
gathered in their doorways to witness her departure;
for in those days a middle class woman dressed up
on a week-day was an event, and everyone who
saw it tried to guess the reason therefor and built
up a whole system of speculation on it.
Benjamin, clean-shaven and superabundantly pow-
dered and red as a poppy spreading its petals in the
morning sun after a stormy night, followed behind,
uttering from time to time a vigourous "Gee-hup" in
a chest C, and pricking the donkey with the point of
his rapier.
M. Durand's donkey, under my uncle's sword
pricks, went at a good pace, too good, in fact, to
suit my grandmother, who bobbed up and down on
her pillow like a shuttlecock on a battledore. But at
some distance from the point where the road to
Moulot separates from the road to La Chapelle to
70 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
reach its modest destination, she perceived that the
donkey had slowed down, like a stream of molten
metal which thickens and moves slower the farther
it gets from the furnace. Its bell, which had been
jingling emphatically and proudly, now gave forth
only spasmodic sighs, like a voice dying away. My
grandmother turned around to ask Benjamin what
was the matter, but he had disappeared, melted like
a ball of wax, conjured away, lost like a fly in space.
No one could give her any information about him.
You can imagine her vexation at his sudden disap-
pearance. He was not worth the trouble they took
for his happiness, she said to herself. His indif-
ference was incurable. He would always stagnate
like a marsh whose waters could not be made
to flow in a channel. For a moment she felt a
desire to abandon him to his destiny and not even
iron his shirts any more. But her queenly char-
acter asserted itself. She had begun, and she must
finish. She swore she would find Benjamin again and
take him to M. Minxit's, even if he had to be tied
to her donkey's tail. It is such firmness of resolu-
tion that carries great enterprises to their con-
clusion.
A peasant boy, who was watching his sheep at the
fork of the two roads, told her the man in red she
was missing had gone down toward the village nearly
a quarter of an hour before. My grandmother
turned the donkey in that direction, and such was the
influence of her indignation upon the beast that he
MY UNCLE AS THE WANDERING JEW 71
began to trot of himself, out of pure deference to his
rider, as if he desired to do homage to her grand
character.
The village of Moulot was in a state of unwonted
commotion. The Moulotats, usually so staid and
with no more fermentation in their brains than in a
cream cheese, seemed all to be in great excitement.
The peasants were hurrying down from the hill-
sides round about. The women and children came
running, calling to each other. Every spinning-wheel
was abandoned, every distaff came to a standstill.
My grandmother inquired the cause of the commo-
tion. They told her the Wandering Jew had just
arrived at Moulot and was lunching in the market-
place. She realised instantly that the pretended
Wandering Jew was none other than Benjamin; and,
indeed, from her donkey's back she soon caught sight
of him in the middle of a circle of idle by-
standers.
The gable of his three-cornered hat rose above
this moving ribbon of black and white heads majes-
tically, as the slate-coloured church steeple rises
above the thatched roofs of a village. They had set
a small table for him in the market-place itself, and
served him with a pint flask of wine and a little loaf
of bread. He walked up and down before the table
with the gravity of a sacrificiant, now taking a swal-
low of white wine, now breaking a bit from the loaf.
My grandmother urged her donkey into the
crowd and soon found herself in the front row.
72 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
"What are you doing here, you wretch?" said
she to my uncle, shaking her fist at him.
"You see, Madame, I wander. I am Ahasuerus,
commonly called the Wandering Jew. In the course
of my travels I have heard much said of the beauty
of this little village and the cordiality of its inhabi-
tants, so I resolved to lunch here." Then, approach-
ing her, he said in a low voice: "In five minutes I
will follow you, but not a word more, I beg of you.
The harm might be irreparable. These imbeciles
would be capable of killing me, if they were to dis-
cover that I am making fun of them."
The praise of Moulot that Benjamin had suc-
ceeded in interjecting into his reply to his sister re-
paired, or rather prevented, the defeat that her im-
prudent words would otherwise have caused him,
and a thrill of pride ran through the assembly.
"Monsieur Wandering Jew," said a peasant in
whose mind still lingered some doubt, "who is that
lady who just now shook her fist at you?"
"My good friend," answered my uncle, by no
means disconcerted, "she is the Holy Virgin. God
ordered me to escort her on a pilgrimage to Jerusa-
lem on that little ass. She is really a good woman,
but a little talkative. She is in a temper this morn-
ing because she has lost her rosary."
"Why isn't the infant Jesus with her?"
"God did not wish her to take him along, because
he has chicken-pox just now."
Then the objections began to rain down on Ben-
MY UNCLE AS THE WANDERING JEW 73
jamin as thick as hail. But he was not a man to be
intimidated by the Moulot blockheads. Danger elec-
trified him, and he parried all the thrusts aimed at
him with admirable dexterity; which did not prevent
him from every now and then moistening his throat
with a swallow of white wine. And, to tell the truth,
he was already at his seventh pint.
The village schoolmaster, in the capacity of learned
man, was the first to enter the lists.
"Then how does it happen, Monsieur Wandering
Jew, that you have no beard? In the Ballad of
Brussels it says that you have a thick beard, and you
are represented everywhere with a long white beard
reaching to your girdle."
"It was too dirty, Monsieur schoolmaster. I
asked the good God to let me go without that horrid
big beard, and he put it in my queue instead."
"But how do you manage to shave, since you can-
not stop?" the teacher insisted.
"God has provided for that, my dear Monsieur
schoolmaster. Every morning he sends me the pat-
ron saint of the barbers in the shape of a butterfly,
who shaves me with the edge of his wing, while
hovering around me."
"But, Monsieur Jew,1' the schoolmaster continued,
"the good God has been very stingy with you in
giving you only five sous at a time."
"My friend," rejoined my uncle, crossing his arms
over his breast and bowing profoundly, "let us bless
74 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
the decrees of God. Probably that is all the money
he had in his pocket."
"I should very much like to know," said the old
tailor of the place, uhow they succeeded in taking
the measure for your coat, which fits you like a glove,
since you are never at rest?"
"You, who are of the trade, you should have no-
ticed that this coat was not made by the hand of man.
Twice a year one grows on my back, on the first of
April, a light one of red serge, and on All Saints'
Day a heavy one of red velvet."
"Then," put in a fair-haired youngster with a
roguish face, "you must wear your coats out very
fast. All Saints' Day isn't two weeks past, and
your coat is threadbare already and white along the
seams.
I
Unfortunately for the little philosopher his father
was standing beside him. "Go back to the house
and see if I'm there," he said, giving him a kick on
his buttocks and begging my uncle to excuse the im-
pertinence of this little fellow, whose schoolmaster
neglected to teach him religion properly.
"Gentlemen," cried the schoolmaster, "I call you
all to witness, and Monsieur Wandering Jew also,
that Nicholas has libelled me. He continually assails
the village authorities. I am going to pull his
tongue."
"Yes," said Nicholas, "there's a fine authority for
you. Bring charges against me as much as you like.
I shall not find it hard to prove that what I say is
MY UNCLE AS THE WANDERING JEW 75
true. Just let the judge question my boy Charlie.
The other day I asked him which one of Jacob's
sons was the most remarkable, and he answered
Pharaoh. Mother Pintot is my witness."
"Oh, gentlemen," said my uncle, "do not quarrel
on my account. I should be grieved if my arrival in
this beautiful village were to be the occasion of a law-
suit. The wool has not yet fully grown on my coat,
as it is only St. Martin's Day now. That is what
led little Charlie into error. Monsieur schoolmaster
was unaware of this circumstance, and consequently
could not teach it to his pupils. I hope M. Nicholas
is satisfied with this explanation."
CHAPTER V
MY UNCLE WORKS A MIRACLE
MY uncle was about to break up the meeting, when
he noticed a pretty peasant girl trying to make her
way through the crowd. As he loved young girls at
least as well as Jesus Christ loved little children, he
signalled to the bystanders to allow her to approach.
"I should very much like to know," said the young
Moulotate with her finest courtesy, the courtesy she
made to the bailiff when she met him on the way as
she was carrying cream to him, "I should like to
know whether what old Gothon says is really true.
She says you work miracles."
"Undoubtedly," answered my uncle, "when they
are not too difficult."
"Then could you cure my father by a miracle?
Since this morning he has been sick with a disease
that nobody knows about."
"Why not?" said my uncle. "But first of all, my
pretty child, you must permit me to kiss you. Other-
wise the miracle won't work."
And he kissed the young Moulotate on both
cheeks, damned sinner that he was.
"See here," a voice from the rear exclaimed, a
76
MY UNCLE WORKS A MIRACLE 77
voice he knew well, "does the Wandering Jew kiss
women?"
He turned and saw Manette.
"Undoubtedly, my beautiful lady. God permits
rne to kiss three a year. This is the second one I
have kissed this year, and. if you will allow me. you
shall be the third."
The idea of working a miracle fired Benjamin's
ambition. To pass himself off for the Wandering
Jew, even at Moulot, was much, was immense, was
enough to make all the bright wits of Clamecy jeal-
ous. He took rank immediately among the famous
mystifiers, and lawyer Page wouldn't dare to speak
to him again of his hare changed into a rabbit. Who
would dare to compare himself in audacity and re-
sources of imagination with Benjamin Rathery when
once he had worked a miracle? And who knows?
Perhaps future generations would take the thing
seriously. If he were to be canonized, if they were
to make a big saint of red wood in his image, read
a mass in his honour, give him a niche, a place in the
almanac, an Ora pro nobls in the litanies, if he should
become the patron saint of a good parish, if they
were to celebrate his birthday every year with in-
cense, crown him with flowers, decorate him with
ribbons, place ^ ripe grape in his hands, enshrine his
red coat in a reliquary, and give him a church-warden
to wash his face every week. If he should work
cures of the plague or hydrophobia ! But everything
depended upon his carrying this miracle out sue-
78 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
cessfully. If only he had seen a few miracles per-
formed! But how was he to go about it? And if
he failed, he would be scoffed at, jeered, vilified,
possibly beaten. He would lose all the glory of the
hoax so well begun. "Ah, bah !" said my uncle,
pouring a large glass of wine to inspire him. "Provi-
dence will provide. Audaces fortuna juvat. Be-
sides, a miracle asked for is a miracle half per-
formed."
So he followed the peasant girl, a long tail of
Moulotats dragging after him like a comet. On en-
tering the house, he saw a peasant lying on the bed,
his jaws so out of place that he looked as if he were
trying to eat his ear. Benjamin inquired how the
accident had happened, and whether it was not the
result of a yawn or an outburst of laughter.
"It happened this morning at breakfast," an-
swered his wife, "while he was trying to break a nut
with his teeth."
"Good," said my uncle, his face lighting up. "Did
you call anybody?"
"We sent for M. Arnout. He said it was an at-
tack of paralysis."
"You could not have done better. I see Doctor
Arnout knows paralysis as well as if he had in-
vented it. What did he prescribe?"
"The medicine in this bottle."
My uncle examined the drug, saw it was an emetic,
and threw the bottle into the street. His assurance
produced an excellent effect.
MY UNCLE WORKS A MIRACLE 79
"Monsieur Jew." said the good woman, "I see
you are capable of performing the miracle we want."
"I could work a hundred miracles like this a day
if I were supplied with them."
He had an iron spoon brought and wound several
thicknesses of fine linen about the broad end. This
improvised instrument he introduced into the pa-
tient's mouth, raised the upper jaw, which was pro-
truding over the lower jaw, and put it back in its
place. For the disease from- which this Moulotat
suffered was nothing but a dislocated jaw, which my
uncle had discerned at once with those gray eyes of
his which penetrated everything like nails. The para-
lytic of the morning declared he was completely
cured, and ravenously attacked a cabbage soup that
had been prepared for the family dinner.
With the rapidity of lightning the report spread
among the crowd that father Pintot was eating cab-
bage soup. The sick, the halt, the lame, the blind,
all implored my uncle's help. Mother Pintot, very
proud of the miracle's having been performed in her
family, introduced one of her cousins to my uncle to
straighten out his body. His left shoulder looked
like a ham. But my uncle was loath to risk his repu-
tation, and answered that the best he could do would
be to transfer the hump from the left to the right
shoulder, which was a very painful miracle that
scarcely two out of ten hump-backs of the common
sort had the strength to endure.
Then he told the Moulotats that he was sorry
8o MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
not to be able to stay there longer, but he did not
dare keep the Holy Virgin waiting any more. And
he went to join his sister, who was warming her
feet in the village tavern and had had time to have
the donkey fed.
My uncle and my grandmother had the greatest
difficulty in escaping from the crowd, and the vil-
lage bell was rung as long as they were in sight. My
grandmother did not scold Benjamin. After all she
was more pleased than vexed. The way in which
Benjamin had extricated himself from the severe
test flattered her sisterly pride, and she said that
a man like Benjamin was well worth Mademoiselle
Minxit, even with an income of two or three thou-
sand francs thrown in.
The news of the Wandering Jew and the Holy
Virgin, and even that of the ass, had already reached
La Chapelle. When they entered the town, the
women were kneeling in their doorways, and Ben-
jamin, whose wits never failed him, gave them his
blessing.
CHAPTER VI
MONSIEUR MINXIT
MONSIEUR MINXIT received my uncle and my
grandmother very pleasantly. He was a doctor, I
know not why. He had not spent his youth in the
company of corpses. One fine day the science of
medicine sprouted in his head like a mushroom. If
he knew medicine, it was because he had invented
it. His parents had never dreamed of giving him a
liberal education. The only Latin he knew was the
Latin on the labels of his bottles, and at that had he
depended on the labels, he would often have given
hemlock for parsley. He had a fine library, but he
never poked his nose into his books. He said that
since these old books had been written, man's tem-
perament had changed. Some people even said that
all those precious works were only cardboard imita-
tions with names celebrated in medicine printed in
gilt on the backs. What confirmed them in their
opinion was that whenever any one asked to see the
library, M. Minxit had lost the key. However, he
was an intelligent man, endowed with a good dose
of common sense. He made up for lack of printed
knowledge by large practical experience. Since he
81
82 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
was actually ignorant, he soon realized that in order
to succeed he must persuade the multitude that he
knew more than his rivals, and he made a specialty
of urines. After twenty years' study of the science,
he succeeded in distinguishing those that were cloudy
from those that were clear, which did not prevent
him from telling every one who came to him that
he could tell a great man, a king, or a minister by
his urine. As there were no kings or ministers or
great men in the vicinity, he had no fear of being
caught.
M. Minxit had very decided mannerisms. He
talked loud, a great deal, and incessantly. He
guessed what words were likely to impress the peas-
ants and knew how to use them effectively in his
talk. He had the gift of deceiving the people, a gift
which consists of I know not what impalpable qual-
ity, impossible to describe, teach, or imitate. It is
the inexplicable gift by which a shower of pennies
falls into a simple surgeon's pocket, and by which the
great man wins battles and founds empires; the gift
that in some takes the place of genius, and that
Napoleon of all men possessed in a supreme degree.
I call it plain charlatanism. It is not my fault if
the instrument with which Swiss tea is sold is the
same as the one with which a throne is built. In
the whole neighbourhood no one was willing to die
except at M. Minxit's hands. However, he did not
abuse his privilege. He was no more of a murderer
than his rivals, only he made more money with his
MONSIEUR MINXIT 83
many-coloured vials than they did with their pre-
scriptions. He had acquired a handsome fortune,
and also had the faculty of spending his money to
a good purpose. He seemed to give everything as if
it cost nothing, and ,his clients, who streamed to
him, always found open table at his house.
My uncle and M. Minxit were certain to be friends
as soon as they met. These two natures resembled
each other to the dot. They were as alike as two
drops of wine, as two spoons cast in the same mould.
They had the same appetites, and the same tastes,
the same passions, the same way of looking at things,
the same political opinions. Both cared little about
those thousand little accidents, those thousand micro-
scopic catastrophes, which we other fools make such
an ado about. The man without a philosophy amid
the miseries here below is like a man going bare-
headed in the rain. The philosopher, on the other
hand, has an umbrella to shield him against the
storm. That was their opinion. They looked upon
life as a farce, and they played their parts in it as
gaily as possible. They had a sovereign contempt
for those ill-advised people who make one long sob
of their life. They wished theirs to be one long
spell of laughter. Age had made no difference be-
tween them, except for a few wrinkles. They were
like two trees of the same species, one old and the
other in the full vigour of its sap, but bearing the
same flower and the same fruit. Consequently the
future father-in-law formed a prodigious friendship
84 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
for his son-in-law, and the son-in-law professed a
high esteem for the father-in-law, all but his vials.
Nevertheless my uncle entered into the alliance with
M. Minxit reluctantly. He consented because his
reason told him to and because he did not wish to dis-
please his dear sister.
Since M. Minxit loved Benjamin, he found it
quite natural that his daughter should love him, too.
For every father, however good he may be, loves
himself in the person of his children. He looks
upon them as beings who ought to contribute to his
comfort. If he chooses a son-in-law, he does so in
the first place largely for himself and then a little
for his daughter. If he is avaricious, he gives her
to a skinflint. If he is a noble, he welds her to an
escutcheon. If he is fond of chess, he gives her to
a chess-player, for he must have some one to play
with him in his old age. His daughter is a piece of
property which he shares with his wife. Whether the
property is enclosed by a flowering hedge or by a
great ugly brick wall, whether it is cultivated to
produce roses or rape-seed, is none of the property's
business. The property has no advice to give to the
experienced agriculturist; it is unskilled in selecting
the seed best suited to it. Provided the souls and
consciences of these good parents tell them their
daughter is happy, that is enough. It is for her to
accommodate herself to her condition. Every night
the wife when doing up her curls and the husband
when putting on his nightcap congratulate them-
MONSIEUR MINXIT 85
selves on having married their child off so well.
She does not love her husband, but she will get to.
With patience one can accomplish anything. They
do not know what a husband she does not love
means to a woman. It is like a burning cinder that
you cannot get out of your eye, or a steady tooth-
ache. Some women die of the anguish. Others go
elsewhere in search of the love they cannot get from
the corpse to which they have been attached. And
some gently drop a pinch of arsenic into their for-
tunate husbands' soup\ and have their tombstones
inscribed, "he leaves an inconsolable widow." Such
is the result of the pretended infallibility and the dis-
guised egoism of the good parents.
If a young girl wanted to marry a monkey who
had been naturalised as a man and a Frenchman,
the father and mother would not consent, and the
jocko would certainly have to serve the acte respec-
tueux. Good parents, you say. They do not wish
their daughter to make herself unhappy. Detest-
able egoists, I say. There is nothing more absurd
than to put your own way of feeling in place of
another's: It is like trying to substitute your own
body for his. Here's a man who wants to die. He
probably has good reasons for wanting to die.
This young girl wants to marry a monkey. She
probably prefers a monkey to a man. Why refuse
her the chance of being happy in her own way? If
she thinks she is happy who has the right to say
she is not? The monkey will scratch her in caress-
86 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
ing her. What's that to you? She'd rather be
scratched than caressed. Besides, if her husband
scratches her, it is not her mamma's cheek that will
bleed. Who objects to the dragon-fly's hovering
over the reeds in the marshes instead of over the
rose-bushes in the garden? Does the pike reproach
the eel, its god-mother, for always staying in the
mud at the bottom instead of rising to the water
rippling at the surface?
Do you know why these good parents refuse their
blessing to their daughter and her jocko? The
father refuses because he wants a voter for a son-
in-law, with whom he can talk literature or politics.
The mother refuses because she needs a personable
young man to give her his arm, take her to the
play, and go out walking with her.
M. Minxit, after having uncorked some of his
best bottles with Benjamin, showed him through his
house, his cellar, his barn, and his stables. He took
him on a walk through his garden and all around a
large meadow stretching away from the back of
his house. It was planted with trees and watered by
a stream fed at one end by a gushing spring and
forming a fish-pond at the other end. All this was
greatly to be coveted. But, alas, fortune does not
give anything for nothing, and in exchange for all
this comfort it was necessary to marry Mademoiselle
Minxit.
After all, Mademoiselle Minxit was as good as an-
other; she was only two inches too tall; she was
MONSIEUR MINXIT 87
neither dark nor light, neither blond nor red, neither
stupid nor witty. She was a woman like twenty-five
out of thirty. She knew how to talk very pertinently
of a thousand trifles, and made very good cream
cheese. It was much less against her than against
marriage in general that my uncle rebelled, and if
she had displeased him at first, it was because he
had looked upon her as a heavy chain.
"So you have seen my estate," said M. Minxit.
"When you are my son-in-law, it will be ours to-
gether, and when I am no longer here, too."
"Let us understand each other," said my uncle,
"are you quite certain that Mademoiselle Arabella
has no objections at all to marrying me?"
"Why should she? You don't do justice to your-
self, Benjamin. Aren't you as handsome as any
young fellow? Aren't you amiable when you choose
to be and as much as you choose to be? And aren't
you a man of intelligence, besides?"
"There is some truth in what you say, M. Minxit,
but women are capricious, and I have heard that
Mademoiselle Arabella has an inclination for a gen-
tleman of this neighbourhood, a certain Monsieur
de Pont-Casse."
"A country squire," said M. Minxit, "a sort of
musketeer who has squandered the fine estate his
father left him on fine horses and embroidered coats.
He did ask me for Arabella's hand, but I rejected
his proposal most decidedly. In less than two years
he would have devoured my fortune. You can see
88 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
I could not give my daughter to such a creature.
Besides, he is a furious duellist. However, that does
not matter, since he would have rid Arabella of his
noble person one of these days."
"You are right, M. Minxit. But if Arabella loves
this creature?"
"Nonsense, Benjamin! Arabella has too much of
my blood in her veins to be smitten with a viscount.
What I need is a child of the people, a man like
you, Benjamin, with whom I can laugh, drink, and
philosophise, a shrewd physician who will exploit
my clients along with me and whose science will
supply what the divination of urines may fail to
reveal."
"One moment," said my uncle, "I warn you, Mon-
sieur Minxit, I will not examine urines."
"Why not? Come, Benjamin, that emperor was
a very wise man who said to his son : 'Do these
gold pieces smell of urine?' If you knew how
much presence of mind, resourcefulness, keenness,
and even logic are required for diagnosis, by urines,
you would .not want to do anything else your whole
life long. Perhaps you will be called a charlatan,
but what is a charlatan? A man who has more
wit than the multitude. And I ask you, is it from
lack of desire or lack of wit that most doctors do
not deceive their patients this way? Look, here
comes my piper, probably to announce the arrival
of some urine vial. I can give you a sample of my
art on the spot."
MONSIEUR MINXIT 89
"Well, piper," said M. Minxit to the musician,
"what's new?"
"A peasant has come to consult you," he an-
swered.
"Has Arabella made him talk to her yet?"
"Yes, Monsieur Minxit. He has his wife's
urine. She fell downstairs about four or five steps,
Mademoiselle Arabella doesn't remember exactly
how many."
"The devil!" said M. Minxit. "Very stupid in
Arabella. All the same, I will remedy that. Ben-
jamin, go wait for me in the kitchen where the
peasant is. You will see what a doctor who studies
urine is."
M. Minxit entered his house through the little
garden door, and five minutes later came into the
kitchen looking utterly exhausted. He carried a
riding-whip and wore a cloak splashed with mud up
to the collar.
"Whew!" he said, falling into a chair. "What
abominable roads! I am worn out. I have trav-
elled more than fifteen leagues this morning. Take
my boots off immediately and warm my bed."
"Monsieur Minxit, I beg of you !" said the peas-
ant, presenting his vial.
"To the devil with your vial," said M. Minxit.
"You see I can't do another thing. Just like you all.
You always come to consult me just when I come
back from a long way in the country."
"Father," said Arabella, "the man too is tired.
90 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
Do not force him to come again to-morrow."
"Well, then, let me see the vial," said M. Minxit,
with an air of annoyance. He went to the window
and added, "Your wife's urine, isn't it?"
'LYes, Monsieur Minxit." said the peasant.
"She has had a fall," added the doctor, examin-
ing the vial again.
"You guessed exactly."
"On a flight of steps, was it not?"
"Why, you are a sorcerer, Monsieur Minxit."
"And she rolled down four steps."
"This time you are wrong, Monsieur Minxit. It
was down five steps."
"Nonsense, impossible. Go count your flight of
steps over again. You will see there are only fo.ur
in all."
"I assure' you, Monsieur, there are five, and she
didn't miss a single one."
"Astonishing," said M. Minxit, examining the
vial again. "There certainly are only four steps
here. By the way, did you bring me all the urine
that your wife gave you?"
"I threw a little on the ground, because the vial
was too full."
"No wonder I didn't get the right number. That
is the cause of the deficit. It was the fifth step you
poured out, you stupid fellow ! So we will treat your
wife as having rolled down a flight of five steps."
And he gave the peasant five or six little packages
and as many vials, all labelled in Latin.
MONSIEUR MINXIT 91
"I should have thought you would have given a
bleeding," said my uncle.
"If it had been a fall from a horse, a fall from a
tree or a fall in the road, yes. But a fall on
a flight of steps should always be treated this
way."
A little girl came in after the peasant.
"Well, how is your mother?" asked the doctor.
"Much better, Monsieur Minxit. But she cannot
get her strength back, and I came to ask you what
she should do."
"You ask me what she should do, and I wager
you haven't a sou with which to buy medicine."
"Oh, no, dear Monsieur Minxit. My father has
been out of work a whole week."
"Then why the devil does your mother take it
into her head to be sick?"
"Don't worry, Monsieur Minxit. As soon as
father gets work, you will be paid for your visits.
He told me to tell you so."
"Nonsense again ! Is your father crazy to expect
to pay me for my visits when he has no bread in his
house? For what does your imbecile of a father
take me? Take your donkey this evening and get
a sack of wheat at my mill. And take a basket of
old wine and a quarter of mutton along with you
from here. That is what your mother needs. If
her strength doesn't come back in two or three days,
let me know. Now go, my child."
"Well," said M. Minxit to Benjamin, "what do
92 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
you think of the practice of medicine by examining
urines?"
"You are a fine, splendid man, Monsieur Minxit.
That is your excuse. But, the devil ! You will never
get me to treat a patient who has fallen down stairs
any other way than by bleeding."
"Then you are only a raw recruit in medicine.
Don't you know peasants must have drugs? Other-
wise they think you are neglecting them. Well,
then, you shall not diagnose by urines. But it's a
pity. You'd have been a famous hand at it."
CHAPTER VII
CONVERSATION AT M. MINXIT'S DINNER
THE dinner-hour arrived. Although M. Minxit
had invited but a few persons beside those known
to us, the priest, the notary, and one of his colleagues
in the neighbourhood, the table was loaded down
with a profusion of ducks and chickens, some lying
in stately integrity in the midst of their sauce, others
symmetrically spreading their disjointed members on
the oval of their platters. The wine was from a
certain hillside of Trucy, whose vines, in spite of
the levelling-down that has taken place in our vine-
yards as in our society, have maintained their aris-
tocracy, and still enjoy a deserved reputation.
"Why," said my uncle to M. Minxit at sight of
this Homeric abundance, "you have a whole poultry-
yard here, enough to satisfy a company of dragoons
after manoeuvres. Or perhaps you are expecting
our friend Arthus?"
"In that case I would have spitted one fowl
more," answered M. Minxit, laughing. "But if we
ourselves can't manage all this, it will be easy to find
others to finish our task. How about my officers,
that is, my musicians, and the clients who will come
93
94 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
to-morrow with their vials? Don't I have to think
of them? It is a principle of mine that he who has
dinner prepared only for himself is not fit to
dine."
"Quite right," replied my uncle; and after this
philosophical reflection, he began to attack M.
Minxit's chickens as if he had a personal spite against
them.
The guests were suited to each other. For that
matter, my uncle was suited to everybody, and
everybody was suited to him. They frankly and
very noisily enjoyed M. Minxit's bounteous hospi-
tality.
"Piper," said M. Minxit to one of the waiters,
"bring in the Burgundy, and tell the musicians to
come in with arms and baggage, the drunken ones
not excepted." The musicians entered at once and
ranged themselves in a ring around the room. M.
Minxit uncorked a few bottles of Burgundy, then
lifted his full glass solemnly, and said:
"Gentlemen, to the health of M. Benjamin
Rathery, the first doctor in the bailiwick. I pre-
sent him to you as my son-in-law, and pray you to
love him as you love me. Let the music play."
An infernal din of bass drum, triangle, cymbals,
and clarinet broke out in the dining-room, so that
my uncle was obliged to ask mercy on behalf of the
guests. Mademoiselle Minxit made a wry face over
the announcement, somewhat too definite and pre-
mature. Benjamin, who had something else to do
CONVERSATION AT M. MINXIT'S 95
than observe what was going on around him, did
not notice it. But the sign of repugnance did not
escape my grandmother. Her pride was deeply
wounded. If Benjamin was not the handsomest
fellow in the country to everybody, he was to his
sister at least. After thanking M. Minxit for the
honour he did her brother, she added, biting each
syllable as if she had poor Arabella between her
teeth, that the principal, the only reason that had
moved Benjamin to solicit M. Minxit's alliance was
the high esteem in which M. Minxit was held in all
the country round.
Benjamin, feeling that his sister had been tactless,
hastened to add, "And also the graces and charms
with which Mademoiselle Arabella is so abundantly
provided, and which promise days spun of gold and
silk to the happy mortal who shall be her husband."
Then, as if to still the pangs of conscience that this
sorry compliment caused him — the only one he had
yet bestowed on Mademoiselle Minxit and which his
sister had obliged him to — he set furiously upon a
chicken's wing and emptied a huge glass of Bur-
gundy at one draught.
There were three doctors present. They were
bound to <^1k medicine, and they did.
"You just now said, M. Minxit," said Fata, "that
your son-in-law was the first doctor in the bailiwick.
I do not protest in my own behalf, although I have
made certain cures. But what do you think of
Doctor Arnout of Clamecy?"
96 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
"Ask Benjamin," said M. Minxit. "He knows
him better than I do."
"Oh, M. Minxit," answered my uncle, "a rival!"
"What difference does that make? You don't
have to run your rivals down, do you? Tell us
what you think of him, just to oblige Fata."
"Since you insist, I think Doctor Arnout wears
a superb wig."
"Why isn't a doctor who wears a wig as good
as a doctor who wears a queue?" asked Fata.
"A delicate question, Monsieur Fata, especially
since you yourself wear a wig. But I will try to
explain myself without wounding anybody's pride.
Here is a doctor who has his head stuffed full of
knowledge. He has studied all the old books ever
written about medicine. He knows to a tee the
Greek words from which the five or six hundred
diseases that afflict poor humanity are derived.
Well, if his intelligence is limited, I should not like
to trust him to cure my little finger. I would prefer
an intelligent mountebank. His science is a lantern
without a light. It has been said that whatever a
man is worth, his land is worth. It would be equally
true to say that whatever a man is worth, his knowl-
edge is worth. That is especially true of medicine,
which is a science of hypotheses. Causes must be
divined by equivocal and uncertain effects. The
pulse that is dumb under the finger of a fool con-
fides marvellous secrets to the man of brains. Two
things above all are necessary to success in medi-
CONVERSATION AT M. MINXIT'S 97
cine, and these two things are not to be acquired.
They are insight and intelligence."
"You forget the cymbals and the bass drum,"
said M. Minxit, laughing.
"Oh," said Benjamin, "speaking of your bas8
drum, I have an excellent idea. Does there happen
to be a vacancy in your orchestra?"
"For whom?" said M. Minxit.
"For an old sergeant of my acquaintance and a
poodle."
"On what instrument can your two proteges play?"
"I do not know," said Benjamin. "Any you like,
probably."
"At any rate we can have your old sergeant groom
my four horses until my music-master has familiar-
ised him with some instrument. Or else he can roll
my pills."
"By the way," said my uncle, "we can use him to
still better advantage. He has a face as brown
as a chicken just from the spit. You'd think he
did nothing his whole life except cross and recross
the equator. You would take him for the Tropic in
person. Besides, he is as dry as an old burnt bone.
We will say we extracted from his body the grease
we make our salves of. -Our salves will sell better
than bear's grease. Or else we will pass him off for
a Nubian a hundred and forty years old, who has
lived to this extraordinary age by using an elixir,
the secret of which he has transmitted to us in con-
sideration of a life pension; and we will sell the
98 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
precious elixir for the mere bagatelle of fifteen sous
a bottle. No one will afford to be without it."
"Heavens," said M. Minxit, "I see you under-
stand the practice of medicine on the scale of grand
orchestra. Send me your man as soon as you like.
I will take him into my service, whether as a Nubian
or as a dried bone."
At this moment a domestic entered the dining-
room in a great fright, and told my uncle that about
twenty women were tugging at his donkey's tail, and,
when he had tried to disperse them with a whip,
they had come very near tearing him to pieces with
their sharp finger-nails.
"I know what it is," said my uncle, and burst out
laughing. "They are pulling hairs from the Holy
Virgin's ass to keep as relics."
M. Minxit asked for an explanation.
"Gentlemen," he cried, when my uncle had finished
his story, "we are impious men if we do not wor-
ship Benjamin. Pastor, you must make a saint
of him."
"I protest," said Benjamin. "I don't want to
go to Heaven. I shall certainly not meet any of
you there."
"Yes, laugh, gentlemen." said my grandmother,
after having laughed herself. "I don't feel like
laughing. Benjamin's practical jokes always end
that way. M. Durand will make us pay for his
ass, unless we return it in the same condition he gave
it to us in."
CONVERSATION AT M, MINXITS 99
"At any rate," said my uncle, "he cannot make
us pay for more than the tail. Would a man who
cuts off my queue — and my queue, without flattering
it, is surely worth as much as the tail of M. Durand's
donkey — be as guilty in the eyes of justice as if he
had killed me?"
"Certainly not," said M. Minxit, "and to tell you
the truth, I should not esteem you one obole the less
for it."
Meanwhile the yard was filling with women who
maintained a respectful attitude, as though they were
near a chapel in which divine service is being held
and which is too small to hold all the worshippers.
Many of them were kneeling.
"You must rid us of these people," said M.
Minxit to Benjamin.
"Nothing easier," answered Benjamin. He went
to the window and told the good people that they
would have plenty of time to see the Holy Virgin.
She expected to remain two days at M. Minxit's, and
the next Sunday she would not fail to attend high
mass. At this assurance the people withdrew
satisfied.
"Such parishioners," said the cure, "do me little
honour. I must reprove them in my sermon next
Sunday. How can any one be so simple-minded as to
take a donkey's dirty tail for a sacred object?"
"But, pastor," responded Benjamin, "you who are
so philosophical at table, haven't you in your
church under glass two or three bones as white as
ioo MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
paper, which you call the relics of Saint Maurice?"
"Those are exhausted relics," said M. Minxit.
"It is more than fifty years since they worked mir-
acles. My friend the priest would do well to get
rid of them and sell them to be made into bone-
black. I would take them myself to make album
graecum, if he would let me have them at a reason-
able price."
"What is album graecum?" asked my grand-
mother, innocently.
"Madame," answered M. Minxit, with a bow,
"it is Greek white. I regret I cannot tell you more
about it."
"For my part," said the notary, a little old man
in a white wig, with vivacious eyes full of mischief,
"I don't find fault with the pastor for the place of
honour he has given the shin-bones of Saint Maurice
in his church. Saint Maurice undoubtedly had shin-
bones when he was alive. Why should they not be
there as well as anywhere? I am surprised that the
vestry hasn't our patron saint's riding-boots, too.
But I could wish that the cure in his turn might
be more tolerant and might not rebuke his parish-
ioners for their faith in the Wandering Jew. Not
to believe enough is as sure a sign of ignorance as
to believe too much."
"What," replied the cure quickly, "you, Mon-
sieur notary, you believe in the Wandering Jew?"
"Why should I not believe in him just as well as
in Saint Maurice?"
CONVERSATION AT M. MINXIT'S 101
"And you, Doctor," said he, addressing Fata,
"do you believe in the Wandering Jew?"
"H'm, h'm !" said the latter, taking a huge pinch
of snuff.
"And you, honourable Monsieur Minxit?"
"I agree with my colleague," interrupted M.
Minxit, "except that I'll take a glass of wine instead
of a pinch of snuff."
"But surely you, Monsieur -Rathery, you who
pass for a philosopher, I do hope you do not honour
the Wandering Jew with belief in his eternal pere-
grinations."
"Why not?" said my uncle. "You believe in
Jesus Christ."
"Oh, that's different," answered the cure. "I be-
lieve in Jesus Christ because neither his existence
nor his divinity can be called in question, because
the evangelists who wrote his history are men
worthy of credence. They could not have been
mistaken. They had no motive for deceiving their
neighbours, and even if they had wanted to, they
could not have succeeded in accomplishing the
fraud.
"If the facts recorded by them were invented, if
the Gospel, like Telemaque, were a sort of philo-
sophical and religious novel, then, on the appear-
ance of that fatal book which was to spread trouble
and division over the whole surface of the earth,
which was to separate husband from wife, children
from their fathers, which made poverty honourable,
MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
which made the slave the equal of the master, which
upset all received ideas, which honoured everything
that up to that time had been despised, and threw
everything that had been honoured into the fire of
hell as rubbish, which overturned the old religion
of the Pagans, and on its ruins established the gibbet
of a poor carpenter's son in the place of altars "
"Monsieur Cure," said M. Minxit, "your period
is too long. You must cut it with a glass of wine."
The cure, having drunk a glass of wine, con-
tinued:
"On the appearance of that book, I say, the
Pagans would have uttered an immense cry of pro-
test, and the Jews, whom it accused of the greatest
crime that a people can commit, a deicide, would have
pursued it with their eternal denunciations."
"But the Wandering Jew," said my uncle, "has the
support of an authority no less powerful than the
Gospel — the rhymed chronicle of the burghers of
Brussels in Brabant, who met him at the gates of
the city and regaled him with a pot of fresh beer.
"The apostles, I admit, are men worthy of faith.
But, inspiration aside, what were they really?
Tramps, men without hearth or home, who paid no
taxes, and whom the authorities to-day would prose-
cute as vagabonds. The burghers of Brussels, on the
contrary, were respectable men, householders. Some,
I am sure, were syndics or church-wardens. If the
apostles and the Brussels burghers could have a dis-
cussion before the bailiff, I am sure the magistrate
CONVERSATION AT M. MINXIT'S 103
would defer to the oath of the Brussels burghers.
"The Brussels burghers could not have been mis-
taken. A burgher is not a puppet, a boon companion,
or a man of gingerbread. And it is no harder to tell
an old man of over seventeen hundred years of age
from an old man of to-day than it is to tell an ordi-
nary old man from a child of five.
"The Brussels burghers had no motives for deceiv-
ing their fellows. It made no difference to them
whether or not there was a man who travels on for-
ever. And what glory could have accrued to them
for having sat at table in an ale-house and drunk
freshly tapped beer with the superlative of vaga-
bonds, with a sort of damned creature, a hundred
-times more despicable than a galley-slave, to whom
I myself would not like to take off my hat? As a
matter of fact the Brussels burghers acted rather
against than for their interest in publishing their
chronicle. The ballad is not calculated to inspire a
high opinion of their poetic ability. The tailor
Millot-Rataut, whose Grand Noel I have many a
time found wrapped around a bit of Brie cheese, is
a Virgil in comparison with them.
"The Brussels burghers could not have deceived
their people, even had they wished to. Had the facts
celebrated in their chronicle been invented, the in-
habitants of Brussels would have protested on the
appearance of the document. The police would have
consulted their registers to see if a certain Isaac
Laquedem had passed through Brussels on such and
104 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
such a day, and they would have protested. The
cobblers, whose respectable guild was forever dis-
honoured by the brutal conduct of the Wandering
Jew, who was one of the craft, would not have
failed to protest; in short, there would have been a
concerted storm of protests sufficient to make the
towers of the capital of Brabant topple and fall.
"Besides, in the matter of credibility, the ballad
of the Wandering Jew has notable advantages over
the Gospels. It did not fall from heaven like a
meteoric stone. It has a precise date. The first
copy was deposited in the royal library, duly in-
scribed with the printer's name and street number.
The Gospels, on the other hand, are not dated. The
ballad of Brussels is illustrated by a portrait of the
Wandering Jew, in a three-cornered hat, Polish
coat, riding boots, and with a tremendously long
cane. But no medallion has come down to us bear-
ing the picture of Jesus Christ. The chronicle of
the Wandering Jew was written in an enlightened,
investigating century, more disposed to cut down its
beliefs than to add to them, while the Gospels ap-
peared suddenly like a torch lighted by no one knows
whom in the darkness of a century given over to
gross superstitions, and among a people plunged in
the deepest ignorance, whose history is one long
series of superstitions and barbarisms."
"Permit me, Monsieur Benjamin," said the notary.
"You said that the Brussels burghers could not have
been mistaken as to the identity of the Wandering
CONVERSATION AT M. MINXIT'S 105
Jew. Yet this morning the inhabitants of Moulot
took you for the Wandering Jew. In the capacity
of Wandering Jew you yourself worked an authentic
miracle in the presence of the entire people of
Moulot. So your demonstration fails in one point,
and your rules regarding historical certainty are not
infallible."
"The objection is a strong one," said Benjamin,
scratching his head. "I admit I can't answer it.
But it applies to Monsieur Cure's Jesus Christ as
well as to my Wandering Jew."
"But I hope you believe in Jesus Christ, Ben-
jamin?" interrupted my grandmother, who always
wanted to come down to facts.
"Undoubtedly, my dear sister, I believe in Jesus
Christ. I believe in him the more firmly because
without believing in the divinity of Jesus Christ one
cannot believe in the existence of God, since the only
proofs of the existence of God are the miracles of
Jesus Christ. But then that does not prevent me
from believing in the Wandering Jew, or, rather,
shall I tell you what the Wandering Jew means
to me?
"The Wandering Jew is the picture of the Jewish
people sketched by some unknown poet of the people
on the walls of a cottage. The myth is so striking
that you'd have to be blind not to see it.
"The Wandering; Jew has no hearth nor home
nor legal and political domicile. The Jewish people
have no country.
io6 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
"The Wandering Jew is obliged to travel on with-
out rest, without stopping, without taking breath,
which must be very fatiguing to him in his Hessian
boots. He has already been around the world seven
times. The Jewish people are not firmly estab-
lished anywhere. Everywhere they live in tents.
They go and come incessantly like the waves of the
ocean, and they too, have already been around the
world many times, like foam floating on the surface
of the nations, like a straw borne by the current of
civilisation.
"The Wandering Jew always has five sous in his
pocket. The Jewish people, continually ruined by
the exactions of the feudal lords and by the royal
confiscations, always rise to the top of prosperity
again, like a cork. Their wealth grew of itself.
"The Wandering Jew can spend only five sous at
a time. The Jewish people, obliged to conceal their
wealth, have become sparing and close-fisted. They
spend little.
"The suffering of the Wandering Jew will last
forever. The Jewish people can no more reunite
into a national body than the ashes of an oak struck
by lightning can make a tree again. They are scat-
tered over the earth until the end of the centuries.
"To speak seriously, it is doubtless a superstition
to believe in the Wandering Jew. But I say to you
as is said in the Gospel, let him who is free from
all superstition cast the first sarcasm at the inhab-
itants of Moulot. The fact is, we are all supersti-
CONVERSATION AT M. MINXIT'S 107
tious, some more, others less, and often the man with
a wen on his ear as big as a potato makes sport of
the man with a wart on his chin.
"There are not two Christians having the same be-
liefs who admit and reject the same things. One
fasts on Friday and does not attend divine service.
Another attends divine service and eats meat on
Friday. Some lady will mock at Friday and Sunday
alike, yet would consider herself damned if she
were not married in church.
"Let religion be a beast with seven horns. He
who believes in only six horns scoffs at him who
believes in seven, and he who admits but five horns
scoffs at him who admits six. Then comes the deist
who scoffs at all the others, and finally there is the
atheist. And yet the atheist believes in Cagliostro
and consults the fortune-tellers. In short, there is
only one man who is not superstitious, the man who
believes in nothing but what is demonstrated to
him."
It was past nightfall when my grandmother an-
nounced her wish to start.
"I will let Benjamin go on only one condition,"
said M. Minxit, "that he will promise to take part
in a grand hunting party on Sunday which I will give
in his honour. He must familiarise himself with his
woods and the hares."
"But I do not know the mere elements of hunt-
ing," said my uncle. "I can easily tell a hare stew
from a rabbit stew, but may Millot-Rataut sing me
io8 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
his Grand Noel if I am capable of telling a hare on
the run from a rabbit on the run."
"So much the worse for you, my friend. But that
is one reason more why you should come. One
should know a little of everything."
"You will see me do something bad. I shall kill
one of your musicians."
"Oh, be careful not to do that, at least. I shall
have to pay his bereaved family more than he is
worth. But to avoid an accident you shall hunt with
your sword."
"Very well, I promise," said my uncle.
Thereupon he and his dear sister took leave of
M. Minxit.
"Do you know," said Benjamin to my grand-
mother when they were on their way, "I would
rather marry M. Minxit than his daughter."
"Don't wish for anything you can not get, but
do wish for everything you can get," answered my
grandmother, dryly.
"But-
"But — look out for the donkey, and don't prick
him with your sword the way you did this morning.
That is all I ask of you."
"You are cross with me, sister. I should like to
know why."
"Well, I will tell you. Because you drank too
much, discussed too much, and did not say a word
to Mademoiselle Arabella. Now, let me alone."
.CHAPTER VIII
HOW MY UNCLE KISSED A MARQUIS
THE following Saturday my uncle spent the night
at Corvol.
They started the next morning at sunrise. M.
Minxit was accompanied by all his people and sev-
eral friends, among whom was his colleague Fata.
It was one of those glorious days that gloomy winter
occasionally bestows upon the earth, like a jailer
bestowing a smile. February seemed to have bor-
rowed its sun from April. The sky was clear, and
the south wind filled the air with a soft warmth.
The river was steaming in the distance among the
willows. The morning hoar frost hung in little drops
from the branches of the bushes. For the first time
in the year the birds were singing in the meadows,
and the brooks running down the mountain of Flez,
awakened by the warmth of the sun, babbled at the
foot of the hedges.
''Monsieur Fata," said my uncle, "this is a fine
day. Shall we take a walk under the wet branches
of the woods?"
"I don't care to, my colleague," said M. Fata.
"If you will come to my house, I will show you a
109
no MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
four-headed child which I keep sealed in a bottle.
M. Minxit offers me three hundred francs for it."
"You would do well to let him have it," said my
uncle, "and put currant wine in the bottle instead."
Nevertheless, having a good pair of legs, and it
being only two short leagues from there to Varzy,
he decided to go with his colleague. So Fata and
he left the hunting party and plunged into a side-
path that disappeared in the meadow. Soon they
found themselves opposite Saint-Pierre du Mont.
Saint-Pierre du Mont is a big hill on the road from
Clamecy to Varzy. At its base it is covered with
meadows streaming with water-courses, but at its
summit it is shorn and bare. It is like a huge clump
of earth raised on the plain by a gigantic mole. At
that time there stood on its bare an^ scurvy cranium
the remains of a feudal castle. To-day it is re-
placed by an elegant country-house, in which a cattle-
raiser lives. Thus it is that the works of man, like
those of nature, imperceptibly decompose and form
again.
The walls of the castle were dilapidated and its
battlements toothless in many spots. The towers
seemed as though broken off in the middle and re-
duced to stumps. Its moats, half dried up, were
encumbered with tall grass and a forest of reeds, and
its drawbridge had had to be replaced by a stone
bridge. The sinister shadow of this old feudal ruin
cast a gloom on the entire neighbourhood. The
cottages had moved back from it, some going to
MY UNCLE KISSES A MARQUIS in
the neighbouring hill and forming the village of
Flez, others descending into the valley and grouping
themselves as a hamlet along the road.
The lord of this old establishment at that time
was a certain Marquis de Cambyse. M. de Cambyse
was tall, stout, heavily built, and had the strength of
a giant — a veritable old suit of armour made of
flesh. He was of a violent, passionate, excessively
irascible nature, infatuated with his nobility, and
fancying the Cambyse family was an unparalleled
work of creation.
At one time he had been an officer of musketeers,
I know not of what colour. But he was ill at ease
at court, his will there was repressed, his violence
could not find free vent, and he felt stifled amid the
dust of the landed aristocrats which sparkled and
whirled around the throne. He had returned to his
estate, and lived there like a little monarch. Though
time had taken away the old privileges of the no-
bility one by one, he had managed to keep them,
and he exercised them to the full. He was still abso-
lute master, not only of his domains, but also of the
whole country round. Barring the buckler, he was
a veritable feudal lord. He beat the peasants, took
their wives from them when they were pretty, in-
vaded their lands with his hounds, sent his servants
to trample down their crops, and subjected the
burghers whom he came across in the vicinity of his
mountain to a thousand annoyances.
He practised despotism and violence from caprice,
ii2 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
for entertainment, but especially from pride. To
be the most eminent personage in the vicinity, he
thought he must be the wickedest. He knew no bet-
ter way of showing his superiority than by oppres-
sion. To be famous he made himself a detestable
villain. Except in size, he was like the flea whose
only way to make you aware of its presence in the
bed-clothes is biting you. Although rich, he had
creditors, and he made it a point of honour not to
pay them. The terror of his name was such that
not a sheriff's officer in the country could be found
willing to serve a paper on him. A single one,
father Ballivet, had dared to serve a writ on him
with his own hand, speaking to him in person, but
he had risked his life in doing it. Honour to gen-
erous father Ballivet, the royal process-server, who
served writs all over the world and two leagues
beyond, as the spiteful wags said in order to dim
the glory of this great process-server.
This is how he managed it. He wrapped his docu-
ment in a half-dozen envelopes cunningly sealed,
and presented it to M. de Cambyse as a package
coming from the castle of Vilaine. While the Mar-
quis was unwrapping the document, he sneaked out
stealthily, reached the main gate, and mounted his
horse, which he had fastened to a tree some dis-
tance from the castle. The Marquis was furious
when he found out what the package contained and
that he had been duped by a process-server, and he
ordered his domestics to go in pursuit of him. But
MY UNCLE KISSES A MARQUIS 113
father Ballivet was beyond their reach, and mocked
at them with a gesture of the hand that I cannot
describe here.
M. de Cambyse felt scarcely greater scruples
about discharging hii> gun at a peasant than at 'a fox.
He had already maimed two or three, who were
known in the neighbourhood as M. de Cambyse's
cripples, and several prominent inhabitants of
Clamecy had been the victims of his mean practical
jokes. Although he was not yet very old, the hon-
ourable lord had perpetrated enough bloody tricks
to entitle him to two life-sentences. But his family
stood well at court, and the protection of his noble
relatives secured him against prosecution. The fact
is, each one takes his pleasure where he finds it.
The good King Louis XV., who entertained him-
self so merrily and pleasantly at Versailles and gave
parties to the lords and ladies of his court, did not
wish his peers in the provinces to be bored on their
estates, and he would have been very much vexed
had they had no peasants to howl under their whips,
or had there been no burghers for them to insult.
Louis, called the Well-Beloved, was determined to
deserve the love of his subjects. It is clear, there-
fore, that the Marquis de Cambyse was as inviolable
as a constitutional king, and that neither justice nor
the police could touch him.
Benjamin was fond of declaiming against M. de
Cambyse. He called him the Gessler of the neigh-
bourhood, and had often expressed the desire to
Ii4 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
meet this man face to face. His wish was fulfilled
only too soon, as you will now see.
At sight of the black, shadowy ruins that stood
out sharply against the azure of the sky, my uncle,
philosopher that he was, fell into meditation.
"Monsieur Rathery," said his colleague, pulling
him by the sleeve, "it isn't safe to be in the neigh-
bourhood of this castle, I warn you."
"What, Monsieur Fata, are you too afraid of a
Marquis?"
"But, Monsieur Rathery, you know I am a doctor
with a wig."
"That's the way with all of them!" cried my
uncle, giving free rein to his indignation. "There
are three hundred citizens to one nobleman, and
they allow the nobleman to walk over their bellies.
And they flatten themselves all they can, too, lest
the noble personage stumble!"
"What do you expect, M.- Rathery? Against
force "
"But it is you who have the force, you wretch!
You are like the ox who lets a child lead him from
the green pasture to the shambles. Oh, the people
are cowards, cowards ! I say it in bitter sorrow,
as a mother says that her child has a bad heart.
The man who sacrifices himself for the people is al-
ways left to the mercy of the executioner, and if there
is no rope with which to hang him, the people under-
take to furnish it. Two thousand years have passed
over the ashes of the Gracchi, and seventeen hundred
MY UNCLE KISSES A MARQUIS 115
and fifty years over the cross of Jesus, and they are
still the same people. They sometimes have spurts of
courage, and then fire issues from their mouths and
nostrils. But slavery is their normal condition.
They always return to it, as a tamed canary returns
to its cage. You see the brook rushing onward
swollen by a sudden storm, and you take it for a
mighty river. The next day you pass again and you
find only a mere thread of water hiding under the
grass growing on the banks, with nothing left of the
torrential flood of the day before but a few straws
hanging from the branches of the bushes. The peo-
ple are strong when they wish to be. But look out,
their strength lasts only a moment. Those who rely
upon them build their house upon the frozen surface
of a lake."
At that moment a man dressed in a rich hunting
suit crossed the road, followed by barking dogs
and a long train of attendants. Fata turned pale.
"M. de Cambyse," he said to my uncle, and bowed
profoundly. But Benjamin stood erect, without
doffing his hat, like a Spanish grandee.
Nothing was more likely to offend the terrible
Marquis than the presumption of this common citi-
zen who refused him the ordinary homage on the
edge of his domains and in front of his castle. It
was, moreover, a very bad example, which might
become contagious.
"Clodhopper," said he to my uncle, with his lordly
air, "why don't you salute me?"
n6 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
"And you," answered my uncle, measuring him
from head to foot with his grey eyes, "why didn't
you salute me?"
"Don't you know I am the Marquis de Cambyse,
lord of all this domain?"
"And you, don't you know I am Benjamin
Rathery, doctor of medicine, of Clamecy?"
"Really," said the Marquis, "so you are a saw-
bones? I congratulate you. It is a fine title you
have."
"It is as good a title as yours. To acquire it
I had to pursue long and serious studies. But what
did that de cost you which you put before your
name? The king can make twenty marquises a day,
but I defy him, with all his power, to make one
doctor. A doctor has his usefulness. You'll find it
out later, perhaps. But what is a marquis good for?"
The Marquis de Cambyse had breakfasted well
that morning. He was in a good humour.
"A funny old codger," he said to his steward.
"I would rather have met him than a deer.
And this one," he added, pointing his finger at Fata,
"who is he?"
"M. Fata, of Varzy, Marquis," said the doctor,
bowing reverentially a second time.
"Fata," said my uncle, "you are a poltroon. I
suspected as much, but you will have to answer to
me for this conduct."
"What," said the Marquis to Fata, "you are ac-
quainted with this man?"
MY UNCLE KISSES A MARQUIS 117
"Very slightly, Monsieur Marquis, I swear it. I
know him only because I have dined with him at
M. Minxit's. But the moment he fails in the respect
he owes the nobility, I know him no more."
"And I," said my uncle, "am just beginning to
know him."
"What, Monsieur Fata of Varzy," continued the
Marquis, "do you dine with that scoundrel
Minxit?"
"Oh, quite by chance, Monseigneur, when I hap-
pened to pass through Corvol one day. I know
very well that Minxit is a man one ought not to
associate with. He is a hare-brained fellow, con-
ceited on account of his wealth, and thinks himself
as good as a nobleman. Wow ! Wow ! Who gave
me that kick from behind?"
"I did," said Benjamin, "in behalf of M.
Minxit."
"Now," said the Marquis, "you have nothing
more to do here, Monsieur Fata. Leave me alone
with your travelling companion. So then," he
added, addressing my uncle, "you persist in refus-
ing to salute me?"
"If you salute me first, I will salute you next,"
said Benjamin.
"Is that your last word?"
"Yes."
"Have you carefully considered what you are
doing?"
"Listen," said my uncle, "I will show deference
ii8 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
for your title, and prove to you how accommodating
I am in everything that concerns etiquette."
With this he took a coin from his pocket, and,
tossing it in the air, said to the Marquis:
"Heads or tails? Noble or doctor, whomso for-
tune designates shall be the first to salute, and from
this there shall be no appeal."
"Insolent fellow," said the fat, chubby-faced
steward. "Don't you see that you are lacking most
scandalously in respect to Monseigneur. If I were
in his place, I would have given you a beating long
ago."
"My friend," answered Benjamin, "stick to your
figures. Your lord pays you to cheat him, not to
give him advice."
Just then a game-keeper stole behind my uncle,
and knocked his three-cornered hat into the mud.
Benjamin was remarkably strong. As he turned
round, the broad grin at the success of his trick was
still on the game-keeper's lips. My uncle with one
blow of his iron fist sent the man sprawling down-
ward so that he remained lying, half in the ditch, half
in the hedge on the roadside. The man's comrades
wanted to extricate him from the amphibious position
he had gotten into, but M. de Cambyse would not
allow it. "The rogue must learn," said he, "that
the right to insolence does not belong to the common
people."
I really do not understand why my uncle, gen-
erally so philosophical, did not yield with good grace
MY UNCLE KISSES A MARQUIS 119
to necessity. I know very well that it is vexing to a
proud citizen of the people, who feels his worth, to
be obliged to salute a Marquis. But when we are
under the coercion of force, our free will is gone.
What a man does in such circumstances is not a
personal act but the result of external power. We
are then merely a machine not responsible for its
acts. The only one deserving of blame for what-
ever is shameful or guilty in our conduct is the man
who does violence to us. I have, therefore, always
looked upon the unconquerable resistance of mar-
tyrs to their persecutors as obstinacy scarcely worthy
of being canonised. Do you want to throw me into
boiling oil, Antiochus, if I refuse to eat pork? Well,
I must first of all call your attention to the fact that
it is not right to fry a man as we fry a fish. But,
if you persist in your demands, I will eat your stew,
and I will eat it with pleasure even if it is well-
cooked. For to you, to you alone, Antiochus, can its
digestion be dangerous. You, Monsieur de Cam-
byse, level your gun at my breast and demand that
I salute you? Well, Marquis, I have the honour
to salute you. I know very well that after this for-
mality you will be worth no more and I no less.
There is only one case in which we ought to stand
up against force, whatever the consequences, and
that is when they try to force us to commit an act
which is harmful to the people, for we have no right
to set our persona] interest before the public
interest.
120 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
But then my uncle was of a different opinion. As
he stood firm in his refusal, M. de Cambyse had
him seized by his menials and ordered them to return
to the castle. Benjamin, pulled in front and pushed
behind, and entangled in his sword, nevertheless
protested with all his might against the violence to
which they subjected him, and still found a way to
distribute blows right and left. There were some
peasants at work in the neighbouring fields. My
uncle appealed to them for help; but they were
careful not to heed his appeals, and even laughed
at his martyrdom to show their obsequiousness to
the Marquis.
When they had reached the castle yard, M. de
Cambyse ordered that the gate be closed. He had
the bell rung to summon all his people. They
brought two arm-chairs, one for him and one for
his steward, and then he began a pretense of delib-
erating with him over the fate of my poor uncle.
My uncle maintained his proud attitude before this
parody of justice, never for a moment relinquishing
his scornful, mocking air.
The worthy steward was for twenty-five lashes
and forty-eight hours in the old dungeon, but the
Marquis was in good humour, he even seemed to be
slightly under the influence of wine.
"Have you anything to say in your defence?" said
he to Benjamin.
"Take your sword," answered my uncle, "and
come with me thirty feet; away from your
MY UNCLE KISSES A MARQUIS 121
castle, and I will show you my methods of
defence."
Then the Marquis rose and said:
"The court, after due deliberation, condemns the
individual here present to kiss Monsieur the Mar-
quis de Cambyse, lord of all these domains, ex-lieu-
tenant of musketeers, master of the wolf-hounds of
the bailiwick of Clamecy, etc., etc., etc., in a spot
which the said Lord de Cambyse will make known
to him forthwith."
Saying which, he began to undo his breeches. The
menials who immediately understood his intention,
began to applaud with all their might and cry, "Long
live the Marquis de Cambyse!"
My poor uncle was furious with rage. He said
later that he feared a stroke of apoplexy. Two
game-keepers stood with their guns levelled at him,
with the order from the Marquis to fire at his first
signal.
"One, two," said the nobleman.
Benjamin knew that the Marquis was a man to
execute his threat. He did not wish to run the risk
of being shot, and ... a few seconds later the jus-
tice of the Marquis was accomplished.
"All right," said M. de Cambyse, "I am satisfied
with you. Now you can boast of having kissed a
Marquis."
He had him escorted to the gate by two armed
game-keepers. Benjamin fled like a dog to whose
tail a mischievous urchin had fastened a wooden
122 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
slipper. As he was on the road to Corvol, he kept
straight on in that direction, and went to M.
Minxit's.
CHAPTER IX
M. MINXIT PREPARES FOR WAR
M. MINXIT had already been informed, I know
not by whom — by rumour, no doubt, which meddles
in everything — that Benjamin was held a prisoner
at Saint-Pierre du Mont. To free his friend he
knew no better way than to take the castle of the
Marquis by assault and then level it to the ground.
You laugh? But find me in history a war more just.
Where the government does not know how to make
the laws respected, the citizens must take the law
into their own hands.
M. Minxit's yard resembled a camp. The mu-
sicians, on horseback, armed with guns of all sorts,
were already drawn up in battle array. The old
sergeant, who had lately entered the doctor's service,
had taken command of this picked body of men.
From the middle of the ranks rose a large flag made
out of a window-curtain, on which M. Minxit had
inscribed in large letters, that no one might fail to
see them: THE LIBERTY OF BENJAMIN OR THE
EARS OF M. DE CAMBYSE. That was his ultima-
tum.
In the second line came the infantry, consisting of
123
I24 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
five or six farm-hands carrying their picks on their
shoulders, and four roofers of the neighbourhood
each armed with his ladder.
The transport train was represented by the
barouche. It was loaded with fagots with which to
fill up the moats of the castle, although time itself
had filled them up in several places. But M. Minxit
insisted on doing things in the proper regular way.
He had taken the further precaution of putting his
case of surgical instruments and a big flask of rum
in one of the pockets of the carriage.
The warlike doctor, with feathers in his hat and
an unsheathed sword in his hand, bustled about and
with a voice of thunder urged his men on to hasten
the preparations for departure.
It is customary for a general to address his army,
before it advances to battle. M. Minxit was not a
man to omit a formality of this kind. This is what
he said to his soldiers:
"Soldiers, I will not say to you that Europe has
its eyes fixed upon you, that your names will be
handed down to posterity, that they will be en-
graved in the temple of glory, etc., etc., etc., because
those are empty phrases, useless chaff and barren
seeds thrown out to nincompoops. What I have to
say is this:
"In all wars soldiers fight for the benefit of their
sovereign. Generally they have not even the ad-
vantage of knowing why they die. But you are going
to fight in your own interest and in the interest of
M. MINXIT PREPARES FOR WAR 125
your wives and children, if you have any. M. Ben-
jamin, whom you all have the honour to know, is
to become my son-in-law. In this capacity he will
reign with me, over you, and when I shall be no
more, he will be your master. He will be under
infinite obligation to you for all of the dangers to
which you expose yourselves on his behalf, and he
will reward you generously.
"But it is not only to restore liberty to my son-in-
law that you have taken up arms. Our expedition
will result also in the deliverance of the country
from a tyrant who oppresses it, who ruins your
grain, who beats you when he meets you, and who
behaves very improperly with your wives. One
good reason is enough to make a Frenchman fight
bravely. You have two, so you are invincible. The
dead shall have a decent burial at my expense, and
the wounded shall be cared for in my house. Long
live M. Benjamin Rathery! Death to Cambyse!
Destruction to his castle!"
"Bravo, Monsieur Minxit!" said my uncle, who
had just come in through a back gate, as became a
conquered man. "That was a fine speech. If you
had delivered it in Latin, I should have thought that
you pirated it from Titus Livius."
At sight of my uncle a general hurrah went up
from the army. M. Minxit gave the command,
"At ease!" and took Benjamin into his dining-
room. There my uncle gave a most circumstantial
account of his adventures, and with a fidelity to
MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
truth that statesmen do not always show in writing
their memoirs.
M. Minxit was outraged at the insult offered to
his son-in-law, and ground all the stumps in his jaw.
At first he could express himself only in curses,
but when his indignation had quieted a little, he said,
"Benjamin, you are nimbler than I am. You take
command of the army, and we will march against
Cambyse's castle. Where its turrets stood, there
shall henceforth grow only nettles and quitch-
grass."
"If you say so," said my uncle, "we will level even
the mountain of Saint-Pierre. But, saving the re-
spect that I owe to your opinion, I believe that we
ought to act strategically. We will scale the walls
of the castle by night, we will seize De Cambyse and
all his lackeys drunk with wine and sleep, as Virgil
says, and they will all have to kiss us."
"A fine idea," answered M. Minxit. "We
have a good league and a half to travel before we
reach the place, and it will be dark in an hour. Run
and kiss my daughter, and we will start."
"One moment," said my uncle. "The devil !
What a hurry you are in ! I have eaten nothing
to-day, and I should rather like to breakfast before
we start."
"Then," said M. Minxit, "I will give the order to
break ranks, and a ration of wine shall be distributed
to our soldiers to keep them in breath."
"That's right," answered my uncle, "they will
M. MINXIT PREPARES FOR WAR 127
have time to drink themselves drunk while I am
taking my refreshments."
Fortunately for the castle of the Marquis, lawyer
Page, who was returning from a legal examination,
came and asked leave to dine at M. Minxit's.
"You come just at the right time, Monsieur
Page," said the warlike doctor. "I am going to
enroll you in our expedition."
"What expedition?" asked Page, who had not
studied law in order to go to war.
Then my uncle related his adventure and how he
proposed to avenge himself.
"Take care," said lawyer Page. "The thing is
more serious than you think. In the first place, as
to success. Do you really expect to overcome a
garrison of thirty domestics commanded by a lieu-
tenant of musketeers with seven or eight half-
cripples?"
"Twenty men and all hale and hearty, Monsieur
attorney," said M. Minxit.
"Granted," said lawyer Page coldly, "but the
castle of M. de Cambyse is surrounded by walls.
Will these walls tumble, like those of Jericho at the
sound of cymbals and bass-drums? Suppose, how-
ever, that you take the Marquis' castle by assault.
It will be a fine feat of arms, no doubt. But this
exploit is not likely to win you the cross of Saint
Louis. Where you see only a good joke and legiti-
mate reprisals, justice will see a case of forcible
entry, scaling of walls, infringement of domiciliary
128 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
peace, night attack, and all this against a Marquis,
too. The least of these things is punishable by the
galleys, I warn you. After your victory, therefore,
you will be oblged to leave the country. And
what for? Simply to force a Marquis to kiss
you.
"When one can avenge himself without risk and
damage to oneself, I am willing to admit vengeance.
But to avenge oneself to one's own detriment is
ridiculous, an act of folly. You, Benjamin, say that
you have been insulted. But what is an insult?
Almost always an act of brutality committed by the
stronger to the prejudice of the weaker. Now how
can another's brutality damage your honour? Is it
your fault that this man is a miserable savage who
knows no other right than might? Are you respon-
sible for his cowardice? If a tile should fall on
your head, would you run to break it into pieces?
Would you think yourself insulted by a dog who had
bitten you, and would you challenge him to a duel,
like the strange duel of Montargis' poodle with
his master's assassin? If the insult dishonours any-
one, it is the insulter himself. All honest people
are on the side of the insulted. When a butcher
maltreats a sheep, are we indignant at the sheep?
Eh?
"If the evil you wish to do to your insulter
would cure you of that which he has done to you, I
could understand your thirst for revenge. But if
you are the weaker, you will bring down upon your-
M. MINXIT PREPARES FOR WAR 129
self new acts of violence. If, on the contrary, you
are the stronger, you will still have the trouble to
fight your adversary. Thus the man who avenges
himself always plays the role of a dupe. The pre-
cept of Jesus Christ which tells us to forgive those
who have offended us is not only a fine moral pre-
cept, but also good, sensible advice. From all which
I conclude that you will do well, my dear Benja-
min, to forget the honour that the Marquis has done
you, and to drink with us until night to drown the
memory of it."
"I don't share cousin Page's opinion at all. It is
always pleasant and sometimes useful honestly to
return the evil that has been done us. It serves as
a lesson to the wicked. Let them know that it is at
their own risk and peril that they abandon them-
selves to their evil instincts. To let the viper that
has bitten you escape when you might crush it, and
to forgive the wicked, is the same thing. Generosity
in such a case is not only stupidity, it is a wrong
against society. Though Jesus Christ said, 'For-
give your enemies,' Saint Peter cut off Malchus's
ear; which make things even."
My uncle was as obstinate as a donkey. For
that matter obstinacy is an hereditary vice in our
family. Nevertheless he agreed that lawyer Page
was right.
"I believe, Monsieur Minxit," said he, "that the
best thing for you to do is to put your sword bade
in the scabbard and your plumed hat in its box. War
i3o MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
should be made only for extremely serious causes,
and the king who drags a part of his people unneces-
sarily to those vast slaughter-houses known as bat-
tle-fields is a murderer. Perhaps it would flatter
you, Monsieur Minxit, to be enrolled among the
heroes. But what is the glory of a general? Cities
in ruins, villages in ashes, countries ravaged, women
abandoned to the brutality of the soldiers, children
led away captive, casks of wine in the cellars staved
in. Have you not read Fenelon, Monsieur Minxit?
All these things are atrocious. I shudder at the
very thought of them."
"What are you talking about?" answered Mon-
sieur Minxit, "this is a question only of a few blows
of a pick-axe at some old crumbling walls."
"Well," said my uncle, "why take the trouble to
knock them down when they are ready to fall of
themselves? Please restore peace to this beautiful
country. I should be a coward and a wretch if, in
order to avenge an injury wholly personal to myself,
I should let you expose yourself to the manifold dan-
gers that our expedition would involve."
"But," said M. Minxit, "I have some personal
injuries of my own to avenge on this country squire.
He once mockingly sent me horse's urine instead of
human urine for examination."
"A fine reason for risking six years in the galleys !
No, Monsieur Minxit, posterity would not absolve
you. If you will not think of yourself, think of your
daughter, of your dear Arabella. What pleasure
M. MINXIT PREPARES FOR WAR 131
would she take in making such good cream cheeses,
if you were no longer here to eat them?"
This appeal to the paternal feelings of the old
doctor had its effect.
"Promise me, at least," he said, "that justice shall
be done to M. de Cambyse for his insolence. For
you are my son-in-law, and from this time forth,
where honour is concerned, we are as one man instead
of two."
"Oh, rest easy as to that, Monsieur Minxit! I
shall always have my eye trained for the Marquis.
I shall watch him with the patient attention of a cat
watching a mouse. Some day or other I shall catch
him alone and without an escort. Then he will
have to cross his noble sword with my rapier, or I
shall cudgel him to my heart's content. I cannot
swear, like the old knights, to let my beard grow or
to eat hard bread until I have avenged myself, be-
cause the one is unbefitting our profession and the
other is contrary to my temperament. But I swear
to you that I will not become your son-in-law until
the insult that has been offered me shall have been
gloriously atoned for."
"No, no," answered M. Minxit, "you go too far,
Benjamin. I do not accept this impious oath. On
the contrary, you must marry my daughter. You
can avenge yourself afterward as well as before."
"How can you think so, Monsieur Minxit? Since
I must fight to the death with the Marquis, my life
no longer belongs to me. I cannot think of marry-
132 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
ing your daughter, and perhaps leave her a widow
the very day after her wedding."
The good doctor tried to shake my uncle's reso-
lution, but seeing that he could not succeed, he de-
cided to change his clothes and disband his army.
Thus ended this great expedition, which cost
humanity little blood, but M. Minxit much wine.
CHAPTER X
HOW MY UNCLE MADE THE MARQUIS KISS HIM
BENJAMIN had passed the night at Corvol.
The next day, as he was leaving the house with
M. Minxit, the first person they saw was Fata.
Fata, who did not have a clear conscience, would
rather have met two big wolves in his path than
my uncle and M. Minxit. Still, as he could not
run away, he decided to put the best face he could
on the matter and walked up to my uncle.
"How do you do, Monsieur Rathery? How are
you, honourable Monsieur Minxit? Well, Mon-
sieur Benjamin, how did you get out of your diffi-
culty with our Gessler? I was terribly afraid he
might play you a mean trick. I did not sleep a wink
the whole night."
"Fata," said M. Minxit, "keep your obsequious-
ness for the Marquis when you meet him. Is it
true that you told M. de Cambvse that you don't
want to know Benjamin any more?"
"I don't remember, my good Monsieur Minxit."
"And is it true that you told the Marquis that I
was not a man to associate with?"
"I could not have said that, my dear Monsieur
i34 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
Minxit. You know how much I esteem you, my
friend."
"I declare on my honour that he said both," said
my uncle, with the icy coldness of a judge.
"Very well," said M. Minxit, "then we will settle
his account."
"Fata," said Benjamin, "I warn you that M.
Minxit intends to flog you. Here is my switch.
For the honour of the profession, defend yourself.
A doctor cannot allow himself to be whipped like a
donkey."
"The law is on my side," said Fata. "If he
strikes me, every blow will cost him dear."
"I am willing to spend a thousand francs," said
M. Minxit, making his whip whistle in the air.
"Take this, Fata fatorum, Destiny, Providence of
the ancients ! And this, and this, and this, and this !"
The peasants came to their doorways to see
Fata flogged. For, be it said to the shame of our
poor humanity, nothing is so dramatic as to see a
man ill-treated.
"Gentlemen," cried Fata, "I place myself under
your protection."
But no one budged from his place. Owing to
the esteem which M. Minxit enjoyed, he was looked
upon as having in a way the right to administer
petty justice in the village.
"Then," continued the infortunate Fata, "I call
on you as witnesses of the violence perpetrated on
my person. I am a doctor of medicine."
THE MARQUIS KISSES MY UNCLE 135
"Wait," said M. Minxit, "I will strike harder,
so that those who do not see the blows may hear
them, and that you may have some scars to show
the bailiff."
And he did indeed strike harder, ferocious
plebeian that he was.
"Just you wait, Minxit," said Fata, as he went
away, "you will have to deal with M. de Cambyse.
He will not suffer me to be maltreated because I
salute him."
"Tell Cambyse," said M. Minxit, "that I laugh
him to scorn, that I have more men than he, that
my house is more solid than his castle, and that if
he wants to come to-morrow to the plateau of Fer-
tiant with his people, I am his man."
To have done with this incident, let me say at
once that Fata had M. Minxit cited before the bailiff
to answer for the violence he had done him, but
that he could not find a single witness to testify to
the fact, although the thing had happened in the
presence of a hundred people.
When my uncle reached Clamecy, his sister
handed him a letter postmarked Paris, with the fol-
lowing contents :
MONSIEUR RATHERY:
I have learned on good authority that you intend to marry
Mademoiselle Minxit. I expressly forbid you to do so.
VICOMTE DE PONT-CASSE:.
My uncle sent Gaspard to fetch him a sheet of
136 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
royal writing paper, took Machecourt's ink-stand,
and replied at once:
MONSIEUR VICOMTE:
You may go to ...
Accept the assurance of the respectful sentiments with which
I have the honour to be,
Your humble and devoted servant,
B. RATHERY.
Where did my uncle wish to send his vicomte? I
don't know. I have made inquiries to penetrate the
mystery of the words left unwritten. In vain. At
any rate, I have given you an example of the firm-
ness, precision, force and accuracy of his style when
he took the trouble to write.
Meanwhile, my uncle had not abandoned his ideas
of revenge. Quite the contrary. The following
Friday, after visiting his patients, he sharpened his
sword and put Machecourt's overcoat over his red
coat. As he did not wish to sacrifice his queue and as
he could not put it in his pocket, he hid it under his
old wig, and, thus disguised, went to seek out his
Marquis. He established his headquarters in a
sort of tavern on the edge of the Clamecy road
opposite the Marquis' castle. The host had just
broken his leg. My uncle, always prompt to come
to the aid of a neighbour who has broken a limb,
declared himself a physician and offered the help
of his art to the patient. The afflicted family per-
mitted him to join the two fragments of the broken
THE MARQUIS KISSES MY UNCLE 137
shinbone; which he did quickly and to the great
admiration of two tall lackeys in the livery of
M. de Cambyse, who were drinking in the wine-
shop.
When the operation was finished, my uncle took
up his position in an upper chamber of the tavern,
directly above the sign, and began to observe the
castle with a spy-glass, which he had borrowed from
M. Minxit. He had been waiting there a good hour
without noticing anything to his purpose, when he
saw a lackey of M. de Cambyse come running down
the hill at full speed. The man stepped to the door
of the tavern, and asked if the doctor was still there.
Receiving an answer in the affirmative, he went up
to my uncle's room, and, doffing his hat, begged him
to come to the castle and attend M. de Cambyse,
who had just swallowed a fish-bone. My uncle was
at first tempted to refuse. But reflecting that this
circumstance might favour his project of revenge,
he decided to follow the domestic.
The lackey ushered him into the Marquis'
chamber. M. de Cambyse was in his arm-chair,
with his head resting on his hands, and his elbows
on his knees. He seemed to be violently agitated.
The Marquise, a pretty brunette of twenty-five,
was standing beside him, trying to calm him. On
the arrival of my uncle, the Marquis raised his head
and said:
"I swallowed a fish-bone at dinner, which has
stuck in my throat. I had heard that you were in
138 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
the village, and I sent for you, although I have not
the honour of knowing you. I am sure you will not
refuse me your aid."
"We owe that to everybody," answered my uncle,
with icy coldness. "To the rich as well as to the
poor, to noblemen as well as to peasants, to the
wicked as well as to the just."
"This man frightens me," said the Marquis to his
wife, "make him go away."
"But," said the Marquise, "you know very well
that no doctor will venture into the castle. You
have this one here, try to keep him at least."
The Marquis yielded to this advice. Benjamin
examined the sick man's throat, and shook his
head with an air of anxiety. The Marquise turned
pale.
"What is the matter?" he said. "Can it be even
more serious than we supposed?"
"I don't know what you supposed," answered
Benjamin, in a solemn voice, "but it will be very
serious indeed unless the right measures are taken
immediately. You have swallowed a salmon bone, a
bone from the tail, the place where it is most
poisonous."
"That's true," said the astonished Marquise.
"How did you find it out?"
"By inspection of the throat, Madame."
The fact is, he had found it out in a very simple
way. On passing the open door of the dining-room,
he had seen a salmon on the table, with only the tail
THE MARQUIS KISSES MY UNCLE 139
missing, from which he inferred that the swallowed
fish-bone had come from the tail.
"We have never heard that salmon bones are
poisonous," said the Marquise in a voice trembling
with fright.
"That does not alter the fact that they are, and
very much so," said Benjamin, "and I should be
sorry to have Madame Marquise doubt it, for I
should be obliged to contradict her. The bones of
the salmon, like the leaves of the manchineel tree,
contain a substance so bitter and corrosive that if
this bone should remain a half-hour longer in the
Marquis' throat, it would produce an inflammation
which I could not subdue, and the operation would
become impossible."
"In that case, doctor, operate directly, I beg of
you," said the Marquis, getting more and more
frightened.
"One moment," said my uncle. "The thing can-
not move as fast as you would like. There is a little
formality to be gone through first."
"Hurry up and go through it, then, and begin."
"It's something you have to do."
"Tell me what it is, surgeon of misfortune! Are
you going to let me die of neglect?"
"I still hesitate," continued Benjamin, slowly and
deliberatingly. "How shall I venture to make such
a proposition to you? To a Marquis! To a man
descended in direct line from Cambyse, king of
Egypt!"
i4o MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
"You wretch, I believe you are taking advantage
of my position to make fun of me," cried the Mar-
quis, the violence of his character reasserting itself.
"Why no, not at all," answered Benjamin, coldly.
"Do you remember a man that you ordered your
menials to drag into your castle three months ago,
because he did not salute you, and then you inflicted
the most outrageous affront upon him that one man
can inflict upon another?"
"A man I made — kiss me. Actually, you are the
man. I recognise you by your five feet ten inches."
"Well, the man of the five feet ten inches, the man
you looked upon as an insect, as a grain of dust,
the man you would never meet except under your
feet, that man now demands satisfaction of you for
the insult you offered him."
"My God, I ask nothing better. Mention the
sum at which you value your honour, and I will have
it paid to you directly."
"So you think, Marquis de Cambyse, do you, that
you are rich enough to reimburse the honour of an
honourable man? Do you take me for a wretched
clerk? Do you think I will allow myeslf to be in-
sulted in return for money? No, no, it is satisfac-
tion I want, satisfaction for the insult to my honour!
Do you hear, Marquis de Cambyse?"
"Very well. I agree," said M. de Cambyse, whose
eyes were fixed on the hands of the clock. In terror
he saw the fatal half hour slipping by. "In the
presence of the Marquise, I will declare, and in
THE MARQUIS KISSES MY UNCLE 141
writing, if you wish, that you are a man of honour
and I did wrong to insult you."
"The devil ! You get rid of your debts quickly !
Do you think that when you have insulted an honour-
able man all you need do is admit you were wrong,
and then everything is all right aaain? To-morrow
you and your country squires would laugh at the
simpleton who contented himself with a mere show
of satisfaction. No, no, it is the penalty of eye
for eye, tooth for tooth, that you must submit to.
The weak man of yesterday is the strong man of
to-day. The worm has turned into a snake. You
won't escape my sentence, as you escaped the magis-
trate's. There is no protection that can defend you
against me. I kissed you. You must kiss me."
"Have you forgotten, wretch, that I am the Mar-
quis de Cambyse?"
"You forgot that I am Benjamin Rathery. An
insult is like God. In its presence all men are equal.
There is no Insulter the Great and no Insulted the
Small."
"Lackeys," said the Marquis, who in his wrath
forgot the supposed danger he was in, "take this
man to the yard and have him given a hundred
lashes. I want to hear him howl from here."
"Very well," said my uncle, "but in ten minutes it
will be impossible to perform the operation, and in
an hour you will be dead."
"Can't I send my messenger to Varzy for a
surgeon?"
142 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
"If your footman finds the surgeon at home, he
will bring him here just in time to see you die and
come to the assistance of the Marquise."
"But you can't possibly remain inexorable," said
the Marquise. "Isn't there more pleasure in for-
giveness than in revenge?"
"Oh, Madame," replied Benjamin, bowing grace-
fully, "I assure you, had it been from you that I
received such an insult, I should not have resented
it."
Madame de Cambyse smiled. Realising there was
nothing to be done with my uncle, she herself urged
her husband to submit to necessity, and pointed out
that he had but five minutes left in which to make
up his mind.
The Marquis, subdued by fear, made a sign to
the two lackeys who were in his room to retire.
"No," said the inflexible Benjamin, "that is not
the way I mean. On the contrary, lackeys, you will
go and notify the people of M. de Cambyse in his
name that they are to come here. They were wit-
nesses of the insult. They must be witnesses of the
satisfaction. Madame the Marquise alone is per-
mitted to retire."
The Marquis glanced at the clock and saw there
were but three minutes left. As the lackey did not
budge, he said:
"Hurry, Pierre. Carry out Monsieur's orders.
Don't you see that he alone is master here at this
moment?"
THE MARQUIS KISSES MY UNCLE 143
The domestics arrived one after another, all ex-
cept the steward. Benjamin, unrelenting to the end,
would not begin until he came in, too.
"Good," said Benjamin, "now we are quits, and
everything is forgotten. Now I will conscientiously
attend to your throat."
He extracted the bone very quickly and very
deftly, and placed it in the Marquis's hands, and
while the Marquis was examining it curiously, he
said:
"I must give you some fresh air."
He opened a window, swung himself down into
the yard, and in two or three strides of his long legs
was at the gate. While he hurried down the hill-
side, the Marquis stood at the window, shouting:
"Stop, Monsieur Benjamin Rathery. Please stop.
Come back and receive my thanks and the Mar-
quise's thanks. I must pay you for the operation."
But Benjamin was not a man to be trapped by such
fine words. At the foot of the hill he met the Mar-
quis's messenger.
"Landry," he said, "my compliments to the Mar-
quise, and reassure M. de Cambyse in regard to
salmon bones. They are no more poisonous than
a pike's bones, only they should not be swallowed.
He should keep warm compresses about his throat,
and in two or three days he will be cured."
As soon as my uncle was off the Marquis's estate,
he turned to the right, crossed the meadows of Flez
144 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
and the thousands of brooks that intersected them,
and went to Corvol. He wanted first of all to
regale old M. Minxit with the news of his exploit.
He saw him from a distance standing in front of
his door, and waved his handkerchief triumphantly
and shouted :
"We are avenged."
The good old man ran to meet him as quickly as
his short fat legs would carry him, and threw him-
self into his arms as tenderly as if he had been his
son. My uncle said he even tried to hide two big
tears that rolled down his cheeks. The old doctor,
whose nature was no less proud and wrathful than
Benjamin's, was beside himself with joy. On reach-
ing the house he told the musicians to celebrate the
glorious day by blowing the trumpets until night,
and then he told them to get drunk — an order that
was punctually executed.
CHAPTER XI
HOW MY UNCLE HELPED HIS TAILOR TO ATTACH HIS
PROPERTY
NEVERTHELESS, Benjamin returned to Clamecy a
little disturbed by the audacity of his exploit. But
the next day the messenger from the castle brought
him a note from his master and a considerable sum
of money. The note read as follows :
The Marquis de Cambyse begs M. Benjamin Rathery to forget
what passed between them, and in payment for the operation he
so skilfully performed to accept this trifling sum.
"Oh," said my uncle, after reading this letter,
"the good lord wants to pay me to hold my tongue.
He is even honest enough to pay me in advance. A
pity he does not treat all his trades-people the same
way. Had I extracted the fish-bone simply, in the
regular way without any fuss or ceremony, he would
have pressed a six-franc piece into my hand and sent
me to the kitchen for a bite. Moral : It is better to
be feared than to be loved by the aristocrats. May
God damn me if ever I depart from this principle!
"Nevertheless, since I have no intention of hold-
H5
146 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
ing my tongue, I cannot conscientiously keep this
money. If one is to be honest at all, one should
be honest with everybody. But I'd like to see how
much money is in this bag. I'd like to see how much
he pays for the operation, and how much for me to
hold my tongue. One hundred and fifty francs !
Thunder! Cambyse comes down handsomely. To
the thrasher who swings his flail from three o'clock
in the morning until eight o'clock at night, he gives
only twelve sous, and that without any guarantee
that he won't also give the man a beating to
boot. And he pays me one hundred and fifty
francs for a quarter of an hour's work. I call that
generosity.
"M. Minxit would have asked a hundred francs
for the extraction of this bone. But he practises
medicine on the grand orchestra and loud noise plan.
He has four horses and twelve musicians to feed.
For me, who have nothing to support but my case
of instruments and my personage — a personage of
five feet ten inches, to be sure — two pistoles is
enough. So, taking twenty from one hundred and
fifty, there are thirteen pistoles to go back to the
Marquis. I almost feel remorse at taking any of
his money. I'd pay a thousand francs myself — to
be paid after my death, of course — rather than not
have performed that operation for which I am tak-
ing twenty francs. That poor aristocrat, how small
and pitiful he looked with his pale, beseeching face
and the salmon-bone in his throat! How humbly
MY UNCLE'S PROPERTY IS ATTACHED 147
nobility in his person apologised to the people rep-
resented in my person! He would willingly have
allowed me to fasten his escutcheon to his hind parts.
If there was a portrait of one of his ancestors in
the room at the time, his brow must still be red with
shame. I should like the little spot he kissed me
on to be separated from the rest of my body after
my death, and transferred to the Pantheon, that is,
of course, if the people have a Pantheon by that
time.
"But, Marquis, that does not mean that you are
to be let off this way. Before three days have
expired, the entire bailiwick shall know of your
adventure. I even intend to have it related to pos-
terity by Millot-Rataut, our Christmas poet. All he
need do is fill a dozen sheets with Alexandrines on
the theme. As for these twenty francs, they are
money found. They are not to pass through my
dear sister's hands. To-morrow is Sunday. To-
morrow, then, I shall give my friends a supper with
this money such as I have never given them before,
a supper for which I shall pay cash. They should
know how a man of wit can avenge himself without
recourse to his sword."
Having thus adjusted the matter, my uncle began
to write to the Marquis notifying him of the return
of the money. I should be delighted were I able to
give my readers this specimen of my uncle's epis-
tolary style. Unhappily, his letter is not to be found
.among the historical documents that my grand-
i48 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
father kept for us. Perhaps my uncle the tobacco-
merchant used it for a paper bag.
While Benjamin was writing, the maker of his
red suits came in with a bill folded up in his hand.
"What's that?" said Benjamin, laying his pen on
the table. "Your bill again, Monsieur Bonteint,
forever your eternal bill? My God, you have pre-
sented it to me so many times that I know it by
heart. Six yards of scarlet cloth, double width —
isn't that so? — with ten yards of lining and three
sets of carved buttons?"
"That's right, Monsieur Rathery, exactly right.
A total of one hundred and fifty francs ten sous six
deniers. May I be barred out of Paradise if I do
not lose at least a hundred francs on this trans-
action!"
"If that is so," my uncle replied, "why waste
your time smearing up all that ugly paper? You
know I never have money, Monsieur Bonteint."
"On the contrary, Monsieur Rathery, I see you
have some, and I see I came at exactly the right
moment. There's a bag on the table which must hold
just about the amount of my bill, and if you will
permit me "
"One moment," said my uncle, quickly laying
his hand on the bag. "This money does not belong
to me, Monsieur Bonteint. Here is the very letter
of return that I have just written, wjiich you made
me blot. Here," he added, handing the letter .j
the merchant, "if you wish to read it."
MY UNCLE'S PROPERTY IS ATTACHED 149
"No use, Monsieur Rathery, absolutely no use.
All I want to know is when you will have some
money that belongs to you."
"Alas, M. Bonteint, who can foretell the future?
I should very much like to know the same thing
myself."
"In that case, Monsieur Rathery, you will not
take it ill if I go directly to Parlanta and tell him
to push my suit against you."
"You are out of sorts, my dear sir. On what
kind of cloth have you been working to-day?"
"Out of sorts, Monsieur Rathery? Don't you
think I have reason to be? For three years you have
been owing me this money, and you put me off from
month to month on the ground of some epidemic
that has never come. It's on your account that
Madame Bonteint quarrels with me every day. She
finds fault with me for not knowing how to collect
my bills, and sometimes she gets so furious that she
treats me like a blockhead."
"Certainly a very amiable lady. You are fortu-
nate, Monsieur Bonteint, in having such a wife, and
I beg you to present my compliments to her as soon
as possible."
"I thank you, Monsieur Rathery, but my wife is,
as they say, something of a Greek. She prefers
money to compliments, and she says, if you had had
to deal w'f^» rrrr r'vq] Grop^ez. vou would have
been in the Hotel Boutron long ago."
"The devil take it !" cried my uncle, furious that
150 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
Bonteint was not making off. "It is your fault if
I have not settled with you. All your rivals either
have been or are sick. Dutorrent has had two
attacks of pneumonia this year. Artichaut has had
typhoid fever, Sergifer, rheumatism, and Ratine has
had diarrhoea for six months. While you — you enjoy
perfect health. I have had no opportunity of sup-
plying you with medicine. Your face is as fresh as
one of your pieces of nankeen, and Madame Bonteint
looks like a statuette of fresh butter. You see I
have been deceived. I thought you would be
an honour to my clientele. Had I known then what
I know now, I would not have given you my
custom."
"But, Monsieur Rathery, I can't see why either
Madame Bonteint or myself are obliged to be ill
so as to help you pay your debts."
"And I say, Monsieur Bonteint, that you are
under that moral obligation. How would you man-
age to pay your bills if your customers did not
wear coats? This obstinacy in keeping your health
is an abominable procedure. It is a trap you set
for me. At this moment your account-book ought
to show that I owe you fifty crowns. So I will
deduct one hundred and thirty francs ten sous six
deniers from your bill for the maladies you ought
to have had. You will admit that I am reasonable.
You are very lucky to pay for the medicine without
having had to call in a doctor. I know many people
who would like to be in your place. So, then, if
MY UNCLE'S PROPERTY IS ATTACHED 151
from one hundred and fifty francs ten sous six
deniers we take one hundred and thirty francs ten
sous six deniers, there is a balance of twenty francs
still due you. If you want them, here they are.
I advise you as a friend to take them. So good
an opportunity will not present itself soon again."
"On account," said M. Bonteint, "I will willingly
take twenty francs on account."
"In final settlement," insisted my uncle. "Even
so I need all my strength of soul to make this sac-
rifice. I had meant the money to be used for a
bachelors' supper. I had even intended to invite
you, though you are the father of a family."
"Some more of your poor jokes, Monsieur Ra-
thery. That's all I can ever get out of you. You
know very well I have a warrant drawn up for the
seizure of your property, and I can have it enforced
immediately."
"Exactly what I complain of, Monsieur Bon-
teint. You have no confidence in your friends. Why
go to useless expense? Couldn't you come to me
and say, 'Monsieur Rathery, it is my intention to
have your property attached?' I would have an-
swered, 'Attach it yourself, Monsieur Bonteint.
You don't need a sheriff's officer for that.' I will
even serve as a bailiff's man for you, if that is
agreeable to you. Why not seize it now? Don't
stand on ceremony. Everything I have is at your
disposal. You may pack up, wrap up, and carry
away anything you like,"
152 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
"What, you would be good enough, Monsieur
Rathery?"
"Why not, Monsieur Bonteint? I should be de-
lighted to be arrested by your hands. I will even
help you seize my things."
My uncle opened a tumble-down wardrobe that
still had some copper fittings hanging from a nail
inside. He drew out a drawer and removed two or
three old queue ribbons, which he handed to M. Bon-
teint.
"You see, you won't lose everything. These ar-
ticles will not count in the total. I throw them in."
"Umpf !" answered M. Bonteint.
"This red morocco portfolio is my case of instru-
ments."
M. Bonteint was about to lay his hand on it.
"Softly," said Benjamin. "The law does not
allow you to touch this. These are the tools of my
profession, and I have a right to keep them."
"But " said M. Bonteint.
"Here is a corkscrew with an ebony handle in-
laid with silver," Benjamin said, putting it in his
pocket. "I withdraw it from my creditors. I need
it more than you do."
"If you keep everything you need more than I
do, I shall certainly not need a cart to carry off
my prize in."
"One moment," said my uncle, "you will lose
nothing by waiting. Here on this shelf are some
old :::edicine bottles, some of which are cracked.
MY UNCLE'S PROPERTY IS ATTACHED 153
I do not guarantee their integrity. I leave them to
you with all the spiders that are in them. On this
other shelf is a large stuffed vulture. It will cost
you nothing but the trouble of taking it down, and
it will do nicely as a sign for you."
"Monsieur Rathery!" said Bonteint.
"Here is Machecourt's wedding wig. I don't know
how it happens to be here. I do not offer it to you,
because I know all you wear is a toupee."
"What do you know about what I wear, Monsieur
Rathery?" cried Bonteint, getting more and more
irritated.
"Here in this bottle," continued my uncle, with
imperturbable sang-froid} "is a tapeworm which I
have preserved in alcohol. You can use it to make
garters for yourself, Madame Bonteint, and your
children. However, I call your attention to the
fact that it would be a pity to mutilate this beautiful
animal. You can boast of having the longest being
in creation, not excepting the immense boa-con-
strictor. Estimate the rest at whatever you like."
"You are playing with me, Monsieur Rathery.
These things have not the slightest value."
"I know it," said my uncle, coldly, "but then you
have no bailiff's man to pay. Now here, for in-
stance, is an article that alone is worth the entire
amount of your bill. It is the stone I extracted two
or three years ago from the mayor's bladder. You
can have it carved into the shape of a snuff-box, put
a band of gold about it, and add a few precious
154 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
stones, and it will make a very pretty birthday pres-
ent for Madame Bonteint."
Bonteint, furious, started for the door.
"One moment," said my uncle, catching hold of
his coat tail. "What a hurry you are in, Monsieur
Bonteint. I have shown you only the least of my
treasures. Here is an old engraving representing
Hippocrates, the father of medicine. I guarantee
it to be a perfect likeness. And here are three
volumes of the Medical Gazette, which will make
delightful entertainment for these long winter
evenings."
"You're fooling again, Monsieur Rathery."
"My goodness, don't be angry, papa Bonteint.
We have just reached the most valuable article."
My uncle opened an old closet and took out two
red coats, which he threw at M. Bonteint's feet. A
cloud of dust arose that made the good merchant
cough, and a swarm of spiders scattered about the
room.
"The last two coats you sold me. You deceived
me outrageously, Monsieur Fauxteint. They faded
in one morning like two rose leaves, and my dear
sister could not even use them to colour the chil-
dren's Easter eggs. You deserve to have a deduc-
tion made from your bill for this colour."
"Oh," cried Bonteint, horrified, "this is really too
much. Never was a creditor treated more inso-
lently. To-morrow morning you shall hear from
me, Monsieur Rathery."
MY UNCLE'S PROPERTY IS ATTACHED 155
"So much the better, Monsieur Bonteint. I shall
always be delighted to learn that you are in good
health. By the way, Monsieur Bonteint, you are
forgetting your queue ribbons !"
As Bonteint went out, lawyer Page came in. He
found my uncle shaking with laughter.
"What have you been doing to Bonteint?" he
said. "I just met him on the stairs, red with anger,
He was in such a fury that he did not even bow to
me."
"The old imbecile is angry with me because I
have no money. As if that ought not to bother me
more than him!"
"You have no money, my poor Benjamin? Bad,
doubly bad, because I came to offer you a wonderful
bargain."
"Offer it just the same," said Benjamin.
"The vicar Djhiarcos wishes to get rid of a
quarter-cask of Burgundy, a present from one of
his pious parishioners. He has rheumatism, and
Doctor Arnout has put him on a diet of tea, which
promises to last a long time, and he is afraid his
wine may spoil. He wants the money to furnish a
home for a poor orphan who has just lost her last
aunt. So it's both a good bargain and a good deed
that I am proposing to you."
"All very well and good," said Benjamin, "but
without money it is not so easy to do a good deed.
Good deeds are expensive. It isn't everybody that can
afford them. But what is your opinion of the wine?"
t$6 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
"Exquisite," said Page, smacking his lips. "He
made me taste it. It is Beaune of the first
quality."
"And how much does the virtuous Djhiarcos want
fork?"
"Twenty-five francs."
"I have only twenty francs. If he wants to let
it go for twenty francs, the sale is concluded. Then
we will lunch on credit."
"His terms are twenty-five francs, take it or leave
it. Twenty-five francs to save a poor orphan from
poverty and preserve her from vice. You will admit
that that is not too much."
"If you had five francs, Page, we could buy it
together."
"Alas," said Page, "it is a good fortnight since
I have seen a miserable six-franc piece. Cash seems
to be afraid of M. de Calonne. It retires "
"It is not always to be found with doctors," said
my uncle. "So we must think no more of your
quarter-cask."
For sole response, Page heaved a deep sigh.
At that moment my grandmother entered, carry-
ing a big roll of linen in her arms, like an Infant
Jesus. She placed it on my uncle's knees enthusias-
tically.
"Look, Benjamin," she said, "I have just got a
superb bargain. I caught sight of this piece of goods
this morning going around the fair. You need
shirts, and I thought it would just suit you. Madame
MY UNCLE'S PROPERTY IS ATTACHED 1 5 7
Avril bid seventy-five francs for it, and she allowed
the merchant to leave, but I could see from the way
she eyed him that she intended to call him back.
'Let me see your linen,' I said to the peasant. I
offered him eighty francs. I didn't think he would
part with it for that. The linen is worth one hun-
dred and twenty francs if it is worth a sou, and
Madame Avril is furious with me for having inter-
fered with her bargain."
"And this linen," cried my uncle, "you have
bought it, you have bought it?"
"Yes," said my grandmother, who did not under-
stand Benjamin's exasperation. "And there is no
getting out of it. The peasant is downstairs waiting
for his money."
"Well, go to the devil!" cried Benjamin, throw-
ing the roll across the room, "you and That
is, forgive me, my dear sister, forgive me, no — do
not go to the devil. That's too far. But go carry
the cloth back to the peasant. I have no money to
pay for it."
"How about the money you received this morning
from your client?" asked my grandmother.
"Lord, that money isn't mine. M. de Cambyse
gave me too much."
"Too much? What do you mean?" answered my
grandmother, looking at Benjamin in amaze-
ment.
"Yes, too much, my sister, too much, do you hear
me, too much. He sent me fifty crowns for a
158 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
twenty-franc operation. Do you understand?"
"And you are stupid enough to send him back his
money? If my husband were to play a trick like
that on me!"
"Yes, I was stupid enough to send him back his
money. What do you expect? Everybody cannot
have the spirit you exact of Machecourt. I was
stupid enough to send him back his money, and I
don't repent it. I am not going to be a charlatan to
please you. My God, my God! How hard it is
to be an honest man in this world! Your nearest
and your dearest are always the first to lead you
into temptation."
"But you wretch, you need everything. You
haven't a pair of silk stockings that are fit to wear,
and when I mend your shirts on one side, they fall to
pieces on the other."
"And because my shirts fall to pieces on one side
when you mend them on the other, I am to be dis-
honest, my dear sister, am I?"
"But your creditors, when will you pay
them?"
"When I have the money, that is all. I defy the
richest man to do better."
"And what shall I tell the peasant?"
"Tell him whatever you like. Tell him I don't
wear shirts, or I have three hundred dozen in my
closet. Let him choose the one of the two reasons
that suits him best."
"Oh, my poor Benjamin," said my grandmother,
MY UNCLE'S PROPERTY IS ATTACHED 159
carrying off the linen, "with all your wit you will
never be anything but an idiot."
"Really," said Page, when my grandmother was
at the foot of the stairs, "your dear sister is right.
You push honesty to the point of stupidity."
My uncle rose, full of fire, and grasped the law-
yer's arm so hard in his iron hand that he cried out
with the pain.
"Page, this is not a mere matter of honesty. It
is noble and legitimate pride. It is respect not only
for myself, but also for our poor oppressed class.
Should I let this squire say he offered me a sort of
tip and I accepted it? When their escutcheon is
nothing but a beggar's badge, would you have them
fling back at us the charge of beggary that we have
so often made against them? Would you give them
the right to say that we too receive alms when they
are disposed to bestow them upon us? Listen, Page,
you know whether or not I love Burgundy. You
also know from what my dear sister just said
whether or not I need shirts. But for all the vine-
yards of Cote-d'Or and all the hemp-fields of Pays-
Bas, I would not want to have to turn my eyes aside
from a single other person's eyes in the whole baili-
wick. No, I wouldn't keep this money, not even to
buy my life with. It is for us, men of heart and
education, to do honour to these people among whom
we were born. Through us they must learn that
one does not have to be a noble to be a man, that
they may rise through self-esteem from the degrada-
160 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
tion into which they have fallen, and that they may
say to the handful of tyrants who oppress them,
'We are as good as you are, and more numerous.
Why should we continue to be your slaves, and
why should you wish to remain our masters?' Oh,
Page, may I live to see that day, even if I have to
drink poor wine the rest of my life!"
"All very fine," said Page, "but it won't give us
Burgundy."
"Rest easy, drunkard, you will lose nothing.
Sunday I am going to treat you all to supper with
these twenty francs that I extracted from M. de
Cambyse's throat, and at dessert I will tell you the
whole story. I am going to write to M. Minxit
directly. I cannot have Arthus, seeing that I have
only twenty francs to spend, or else he will have
to dine abundantly that day. But if you meet Rapin,
Parlanta, and the others before I do, warn them not
to make any other engagements."
I must say at once that this supper was post-
poned for a week because M. Minxit could not
attend, and then was postponed indefinitely because
my uncle was obliged to part with his two pistoles.
CHAPTER XII
HOW MY UNCLE HUNG M. SUSURRANS TO A HOOK IN
HIS KITHCEN
BEHOLD the flowers, how wonderfully fertile they
are. They scatter their seeds like rain. They
throw them to the wind like dust, they send them
without stint, like those alms that mount to dark
attics, up to barren rocky peaks, among the old stones
of tumbling walls, amid ruins that totter and fall,
without troubling whether or not they will find a
handful of earth to fertilise them, a drop of rain
for their roots to suck, a ray of light to make them
grow, and another ray to give them colour. The
breezes of departing spring carry away the last per-
fumes of the meadows, and the earth is strewn with
fading leaves; but when the autumn breezes come
and shake their moist wings over the fields, another
generation of flowers will have invested the earth
with a new robe, and their feeble perfume will be
the last breath of the dying year, which in dying
smiles on us still.
In all other respects women are like flowers. But
in the matter of fecundity they are not like flowers
at all. Most women, ladies especially — and I beg
1 62 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
of you, my proletarian friends and brothers, to be-
lieve that I use this expression only to conform to
custom; to me the truest lady is the woman who is
the prettiest and the most charming — ladies, I say,
bear children no longer. They become mothers of
families as seldom as possible. They keep from
having children for economy's sake. When the
clerk's wife has produced her little clerk and the
notary's wife her little notary, they believe they
have fulfilled their obligation to the human race, and
abdicate. Napoleon, who had a passion for con-
scripts, said the woman he liked best was the woman
who had the most children. Easy for Napoleon to
say when he had kingdoms instead of estates to pass
on to his children.
The fact is, children are very expensive, an ex-
pense not within everybody's reach. The poor man
alone can permit himself the luxury of a numerous
family. Are you aware that the months required for
nursing a child alone cost almost as much as a cash-
mere dress? Besides, the baby grows fast. The
swollen boarding-school accounts and bills begin to
come in, the shoemaker's bills and the tailor's. The
infant of to-day will be a man to-morrow. His
moustache appears, and there he is a bachelor of let-
ters. Now you don't know what to do with him.
So, to get rid of him you buy him a fine profession.
But you are not slow to perceive from the drafts
made on you from the four corners of the city that
the profession brings your doctor nothing but invi-
M. SUSURRANS IS HUNG TO A HOOK 163
tations and visiting cards. You must keep him till
he is past the age of thirty in kid gloves, Havana
cigars, and mistresses. Very disagreeable, you
will admit. If there were a home for young
people of twenty, as there is or, rather, no
longer is, for infants, I assure you it would be
crowded.
But in my uncle Benjamin's time things were very
different. It was the golden age of midwives.
Women gave themselves up to their instincts with-
out worry or thought of the consequences. They
all had children, rich and poor alike, even those
who had no right to have them. But in those days
they knew what to do with the children. Competi-
tion, that ogre with the steel fangs which devours
so many little people, had not arrived yet. There
was a place for everybody in the beautiful sunshine
of France, and elbow room in every profession. Po-
sitions presented themselves to men capable of
filling them like fruit hanging from the branch.
Even the fools found situations, each according to
the specialty of his folly. Glory was as easily
achieved, as accommodating a maid, as fortune. It
did not take half the wit it does now to be a man
of letters; a dozen Alexandrines made a poet. I do
not say I regret the loss of that blind fertility of
old which produced like a machine without knowing
what it did. I find I have enough neighbours as
it is. I simply wish to make you understand how
it was that at the period of which I speak my grand-
164 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
mother, although not yet thirty years old, was already
at her seventh child.
My uncle absolutely insisted on his dear sister's
being present at his wedding, and he made M. Minxit
consent to postpone the event until after my grand-
mother's churching. The wardrobe of the newcomer
was all white and embroidered, and his entrance
into existence was expected daily. The six other
children were all living, and all delighted to be in
the world. Sometimes one of them was out of shoes,
another one out of a cap. This one had holes at his
elbows, and that one was run down at the heels.
But they had their daily bread and their white
starched shirts on Sundays, and in short kept wonder-
fully well and blooming in their rags.
My father, the eldest child, was the handsomest
of the six and the best equipped with clothes. That
may have been due to the fact that my uncle Ben-
jamin passed on to him his old knee-breeches. They
scarcely needed any alteration and often no altera-
tion at all to make them over into pantaloons for
Gaspard. Through cousin Guillaumot, who was
sexton, Gaspard was promoted to the dignity of
choir boy, and, I say it with pride, one of the best
choir boys in the diocese. Had he stuck to the career
that cousin Guillaumot started him on, he would have
made a magnificent priest, instead of the handsome
captain of a fire company that he is to-day. It is
true I should still be sleeping in the void, as the good
M. de Lamartine says, who himself goes to sleep
M. SUSURRANS IS HUNG TO A HOOK 165
sometimes. But sleep is an excellent thing. Be-
sides, to be the editor of a country newspaper and
the antagonist of the department of public intelli-
gence, is that worth the trouble of living?
However that may be, his Levitical functions
brought my father a superb sky-blue suit. This is
how the good fortune befell him. The banner of
Saint Martin, patron saint of Clamecy, had been dis-
carded. My grandmother, with that eagle eye of
hers, discovered in this holy stuff the wherewithal
to make her eldest son a jacket and a pair of panta-
loons, and succeeded in securing the cast-off banner
from the church treasury at a ridiculous price. The
saint was painted in the very middle, represented
in the act of cutting off an end of his cloak with his
sabre to cover the nakedness of a beggar. That
was no obstacle to my grandmother's plan. She
turned the material, and Saint Martin came on the
inside ; which doubtless did not trouble the saint.
The coat was finished off by a seamstress in the
Rue des Moulins. It would have fitted my uncle
Benjamin, perhaps, quite as well as my father. My
grandmother had had it made with enough goods to
make it over for the second son after the first son
had worn it out. At first my father paraded his
sky-blue coat. I even believe he contributed to pay
for the making out of his wages. But he was not
slow to find out that a magnificent robe is often a
garment of sack-cloth. Benjamin, to whom nothing
was sacred, nicknamed him the patron saint of
1 66 -MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
Clamecy. The children picked up the nickname, and
it cost my father many a blow. More than once
he came home with a piece of the sky-blue coat in
his pocket. Saint Martin became his personal
enemy. He was often to be seen at the foot of the
altar plunged in gloomy meditation. Of what was
he dreaming? Of how to get rid of his coat. And
one day, while the priest was saying the Dominus
vobiscum, he responded, thinking he was talking to
his mother:
"I tell you, I will never wear your sky-blue coat
again."
It was while my father was in this state of mind
that my uncle, the Sunday after high mass, sug-
gested his going along with him to Val-des-Rosiers,
where he had a visit to pay. Gaspard preferred
playing with corks in the street to serving as aid to
my uncle and answered he could not because he had
a baptism to attend.
"That doesn't matter," said Benjamin. "Some-
body else will take your place."
"Yes, but I must go to catechism at one o'clock."
"I thought you had had your first communion."
"I came near having it, but you yourself pre-
vented me by making me get drunk the night before
the ceremony."
"Why did vou get drunk?"
"Because you were drunk yourself and threatened
to beat me with the flat of your sword if I did not
get drunk too."
M. SUSURRANS IS HUNG TO A HOOK 167
"I was wrong," said Benjamin. "All the same
you risk nothing by coming along with me. I shall
be only a moment. We will return before rate-
chism."
"Of course !" answered Gaspard. "When it
would take someone else only an hour, it takes you
half a day. You stop at all the taverns, and the"
priest forbade me to go with you because you set me
a bad example."
"Well, pious Gaspard, if you refuse to come with
me, I wrill not invite you to my wedding. But if
you do me this favour, I will give you twelve sous."
"Give them to me now," said Gaspard.
"Why must you have them immediately, you
scamp? Do you doubt my word?"
"No, but I am not anxious to be your creditor. I
have heard it said in the village that you never pay
anybody, and there's no use seizing your effects be-
cause your effects are not worth thirty sous."
"Well said, Gaspard. Here are fifteen sous, go
tell my dear sister you are coming along with me."
My grandmother went all the way to the door
with Gaspard admonishing him to be very careful
with his coat, as he must keep it for his uncle's
wedding.
"Are you joking?" said Benjamin. "Is there any
need of telling a French choir boy to be careful
with the banner of his patron saint?"
"Uncle," said Gaspard, "before we start I warn
you that if you call me banner-bearer again, or blue
i68 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
bird, or patron saint of Clamecy, I will run away
with your fifteen sous, and go back to play corks."
On entering the village my uncle met M. Susur-
rans, the grocer, a very short, very thin little man,
who seemed to be made out of charcoal and salt-
petre, like gunpowder. M. Susurrans had a sort
of small farm at Val-des-Rosiers. He was on his
way back to Clamecy, carrying under his arm a keg
that he hoped to smuggle in, and at the end of his
cane a pair of capons that Madame Susurrans was
waiting for to put on the spit. M. Susurrans knew
my uncle and esteemed him, for Benjamin bought
the sugar of him with which he sweetened his drugs
and the powder he put on his queue. So M. Susur-
rans asked him to come to the farm and take some
refreshment. My uncle, whose normal condition
was thirst, accepted without ceremony. The grocer
and his customer established themselves at the corner
of the fire, each on a stool. They placed the keg
between them. But they did not allow its contents
to turn sour, and when it was not in the hands of
one, it was at the lips of the other.
"Appetite comes by drinking as well as by eating.
Suppose we eat the chickens?" said M. Susurrans.
"Right you are," answered my uncle, "it will save
you the trouble of carrying them home. I don't
understand how you could ever have thought of
loading yourself down with such a burden."
"And what sauce shall we eat them with?"
"With that which can be made the quickest," said
M. SUSURRANS IS HUNG TO A HOOK 169
Benjamin. "Here is an excellent fire to roast them
on, too."
"Yes," said M. Susurrans, "but there are no
kitchen utensils here except for making an onion
soup. We have no spit."
Benjamin, like all great men, was never caught
unprepared in any situation.
"It shall never be said," he answered, "that two
intelligent men like ourselves were unable to eat a
roasted fowl for want of a spit. If you take my
advice, we will spit our chickens on the blade of my
sword, and Gaspard here will turn them over the
fire."
You would never have thought of this expedient,
dear reader, but my uncle had imagination enough
for ten present-day novelists.
Gaspard, who did not often get chicken to eat,
went at his task with a will, and in an hour's time
the fowls were roasted to a turn. They set a wash-
tub upside-down before the fire for a table, and so
did not have to leave their seats. They had no
glasses, but the keg was not left idle on that account.
They drank out of the bunghole, as in the days of
Homer. It was not very convenient, but my uncle
was such a stoic that he would rather drink good
wine that way than bad wine out of crystal glasses.
In spite of the various difficulties that the operation
involved, the chickens were soon despatched. For
some time the unfortunate birds had been nothing
more than bare skeletons and still the two friends
170 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
kept on drinking. M. Susurrans, a very small man,
as we have said, whose stomach and brain almost
touched each other, was as drunk as one can be.
But Benjamin, the tall Benjamin, had preserved the
major part of his reason, and looked on his weaker
adversary with pity. As for Gaspard, to whom they
had occasionally passed the keg, he went a little
beyond the limits of temperance. Filial respect does
not allow me to use another expression.
Such was the spiritual situation of the party when
they left the wash-tub. It was then four o'clock, and
they began to get ready to start. M. Susurrans re-
membered he was to carry some chickens home to
his wife and looked about for them to put them on
the end of his cane, and asked my uncle if he had
not seen them.
"Your chickens?" said Benjamin. "Are you jok-
ing? You have just eaten them."
"Yes, you old fool," added Gaspard, "you have
eaten them. They were spitted on my uncle's sword,
and I turned the spit."
"It's not true," cried M. Susurrans. "If I had
eaten my chickens, I should not have such an appe-
tite, and I am hungry enough to devour a wolf."
"I don't deny it," replied my uncle, "but it is
none the less true that you have eaten your chickens.
If you doubt it, here are the tones of both of them.
You can hang them to the end of your cane if you
like."
"You are lying, Benjamin. I don't recognise them
M. SUSURRANS IS HUNG TO A HOOK 1 7 1
as~ the bones of my chickens. It's you who have
taken them from me, and you shall return them
to me."
"Very well," said my uncle, "send to look for
them at my house to-morrow, .and I'll return them
to you."
"You shall return them to me at once," said M.
Susurrans, rising on tip-toe to grab my uncle by the
throat.
"Now, now, papa Susurrans !" said Benjamin.
"If you are joking, I warn you that you are carry-
ing the joke too far, and "
"No, you wretch, I am not joking," said M.
Susurrans, planting himself in front of the door.
"You shall not leave here, neither you nor your
nephew, till you have given me back my chick-
ens."
"Uncle," said Gaspard, "would you like me to trip
up the old imbecile?"
"Never mind, Gaspard, never mind, my friend,"
said Benjamin. "You are a churchman, and it is
not seemly for you to to be mixed up in a quarrel.
Now, then, M. Susurrans, one, two, will you let us
out?"
"When you have given me my chickens back
again," answered M. Susurrans, making a half turn
to the left and thrusting his cane at my uncle like a
bayonet.
Benjamin caught the cane, lowered it, took the
little man by the middle of the body, and hung him
172 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
by the waistband to an iron rod over the door used
to hang kitchen utensils on.
Susurrans, hanging like a saucepan, behaved like
a beetle pinned to the floor. He screamed and
kicked and cried "Fire! Murder P'
My uncle caught sight of a Liege almanac lying
on the mantel-shelf.
"Here, Monsieur Susurrans. Cicero says study
is a consolation in all situations in life. Content
yourself with studying this book until someone comes
to take you down. For I have no time to carry on
a conversation with you, and I have the honour to
wish you good evening."
My uncle had gone only twenty steps when he
met the farmer, who came running at full speed and
asked why his master was crying "Fire! Murder!"
"The house is probably burning and someone is
trying to kill your master," answered my uncle with
perfect composure. He whistled to Gaspard, who
was lingering behind, and continued on his way.
The weather had grown milder. The sky, shortly
before so bright, had turned drab-colour, like a plas-
ter ceiling before it dries. A fine, close, piercing
rain was falling and streamed in little drops from
the stripped branches, making the trees and bushes
look as though they were crying.
My uncle's hat soaked up the rain like a sponge,
and soon its two corners became two spouts from
which black water poured upon his shoulders. Con-
cerned for his coat, he turned it inside out, and re-
M. SUSURRANS IS HUNG TO A HOOK 173
membering his sister's injunction, ordered Gaspard
to do the -same. Gaspard heeded the injunction,
forgetting Saint Martin.
A little farther on, Benjamin and Gaspard met
a troop of peasants returning from vespers. At
sight of the saint on Gaspard's coat, head down-
most and all four of his horse's hoofs in the air,
as if he had fallen down from the sky, the peasants
burst out laughing and making fun. You know my
uncle well enough to know he would not allow fel-
lows like that to make sport of him with impunity.
He drew his sword, while Gaspard armed himself
with stones and led the attack, carried away by his
ardour. Then my uncle saw that Saint Martin was
the only one to blame, and he was seized with such a
fit of laughter that he was obliged to lean on his
sword to keep from falling.
"Gaspard," he cried, in a choking voice, "patron
saint of Clamecy, your saint is up'side down, your
saint is losing his helmet."
Gaspard, seeing he was the object of all this mirth,
could not endure the humiliation. He tore off his
coat, threw it on the ground, and trampled on it.
When my uncle had finished laughing, he tried to
make him pick it up and put it on again. But Gas-
pard dashed off across the fields, and was seen no
more. Benjamin picked up the coat in pity and put
it on the end of his sword.
In the meantime M. Susurrans had come up.
JHle .had sobered off a little and now remembered
i74 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
quite distinctly that he had eaten his chickens up.
But he had lost his three-cornered hat. • Benjamin,
who was much amused by the little man's outbursts
of anger and liked to see him get heated up,
maintained he had eaten his hat. Susurrans had
acquired such respect for Benjamin's physical
strength that he did not dare take offence. He even
was so contrary as to apologise to my uncle.
Benjamin and M. Susurrans returned to Clamecy
together. At the otusk'irts of the town they met
lawyer Page.
"Where are you going?" he asked my uncle.
"You might imagine. I am going to my dear
sister's for supper."
"No, you are not," said Page. "You are going
to have supper with me at the Hotel du
Dauphin."
"And if I should accept, to what circumstance
would I owe the privilege?"
"I will explain in a word. A wealthy lumber
merchant of Paris, for whom I won an important
case, has invited me to dine with his attorney, whom
he does not know. It is carnival time. So I de-
cided you were to be his attorney, and I was on my
way to tell you. It is an adventure worthy of us,
Benjamin, and I feel sure I did not overestimate
your passion for merry pranks when I counted on
your doing this."
"A well-conceived masquerade, I am sure," said
Benjamin. "But I don't know," he added, laugh-
M. SUSURRANS IS HUNG TO A HOOK 1 75
ing, "whether honour and delicacy will permit me
to play the part of the attorney."
"At table," said Page, "the most honourable man
is the man who most conscientiously empties his
glass."
"True, but suppose your lumber merchant should
talk to me about his case?"
"I will answer for you."
"And suppose he should take it into his head to
pay a visit to his attorney to-morrow?"
"I will bring him to you."
"All very fine, but I don't look like an attorney,
at least so I flatter myself."
"You'll succeed in making your looks fit. You
once passed yourself off for the Wandering Jew."
"And my red coat?"
"The man is a gull from Paris. We'll tell him
that in the provinces attorneys wear red coats."
"And my sword?"
"If he notices it, tell him you use it to cut your
pens with."
"But who actually is your lumberman's attorney?"
"Dulciter. You won't be so inhuman as to let me
dine with Dulciter?"
"I know Dulciter isn't very entertaining, but if
ever he finds out that I dined in his place, he would
sue me for damages."
"I will defend you in court. Come, I am sure
dinner is ready. But wait a moment! Our host
asked me to bring Dulciter's head clerk along.
176 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
Where the devil am I to find a clerk for Dul-
citer?"
Benjamin ha-ha'd and clapped his hands.
"I have it! Here," he said, putting his hand on
M. Susurrans' shoulder, "here is your clerk."
"Bosh," said Page, "a green-grocer?"
"What difference does that make?"
"He smells of cheese."
"You are not a connoisseur, Page. He smells of
candles."
"But he is sixty years old."
"We will introduce him as the elder of the guild
of clerks."
"You are knaves, blackguards!" said M. Susur-
rans in a fury. "I am not a bandit! I am not a
fellow who runs from tavern to tavern."
"No," interrupted my uncle. "He gets drunk
by himself in his cellar."
"Possibly, Monsieur Rathery. At any rate I don't
get drunk at other people's expense, and I won't have
anything to do with your rascalities."
"But you will this evening," said my uncle. "If
you don't I'll tell everybody where I hung you."
"Where did you hang him?" asked Page.
"Guess " said Benjamin.
"Monsieur Rathery!" cried Susurrans, putting his
finger on his mouth.
"Well, are you ready to come along with us?"
"But, Monsieur Rathery, my wife is waiting for
me. They will think me dead, murdered. They
M. SUSURRANS IS HUNG TO A HOOK 177
will search for me along the road as far as Val-des-
Rosiers."
"So much the better. Perhaps they'll find your
hat."
"Monsieur Rathery, my good Monsieur Ra-
thery!" pleaded Susurrans, clasping his hands.
"Now, now," said my uncle, "don't be so child-
ish ! You owe me satisfaction, and I owe you a
dinner. At one stroke we shall be quits."
"At least let me go tell my wife."
"No," said Benjamin, placing himself between
him and Page. "I know Madame Susurrans from
behind her counter. She would lock you in and turn
the key twice, and I don't want you to escape us.
I wouldn't give you up for ten pistoles."
"And my keg," said Susurrans, "what am I to do
with my keg now that I am an attorney's clerk?''
"You're right," said Benjamin, "you cannot pre-
sent yourself to our client with a keg."
They were then in the middle of the Beuvron
bridge. My uncle took the keg from the hands of
Susurrans and threw it into the river.
"Rathery, you rascal! Rathery, you scoundrel!"
cried Susurrans. "You shall pay me for my keg.
Six francs it cost me. You shall find out what it will
cost you."
"M. Susurrans," said Benjamin, assuming a lofty
mien, "let us follow the example of the sage who
said, Omnia me cum porto, that is, everything that
is a burden to me I throw into the river. See, here
178 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
at the end of my sword is a magnificent coat, my
nephew's Sunday coat, a museum piece. The mak-
ing of it alone costs thirty times as much as your
miserable keg. Well, I sacrifice it without the slight-
est regret. Throw it over the bridge, and we shall
be quits."
M. Susurrans objecting, Benjamin himself threw
the coat over the bridge, then took Page and Susur-
rans each by the arm, and said:
"Now let us be off. Raise the curtain. The play
is on."
But man proposes and God disposes. As they
were going up the steps of Vieille-Rome, they met
Madame Susurrans face to face. As her husband
had not yet returned, she had started out to meet
him with a lantern. When she caught sight of him
between my uncle and lawyer Page, both men of a
suspicious reputation, her anxiety turned into anger.
"At last, here you are!" she cried. "How fortu-
nate I I was beginning to think you were not com-
ing home at all to-night. A nice life you are lead-
ing! A fine example to your son!"
Then, looking at her husband closer, she saw he
was empty-handed and hatless.
"Where are your chickens, Monsieur! And your
hat, wretch ! And your keg, drunkard ! What have
you done with them?"
"Madame," responded Benjamin, gravely, "we
ate the chickens, and as for his hat, he had the mis-
fortune to lose it on the way."'5
M. SUSURRANS IS HUNG TO A HOOK 1 79
"What, the monster lost his hat! A freshly-
blocked hat!"
"Yes, Madame, he lost it, and he is to be con-
gratulated, considering the position he was in, that
he didn't lose his wig, too. As for the keg, the
customs officials seized it, and have reported the
offence."
Page could not help laughing, and Mme. Susur-
rans said:
"I see. You made my husband drunk, and are
now making fun of us into the bargain. You would
do better, Monsieur Rathery, attending to your pa-
tients and paying your debts."
"Do I owe you anything, Madame?" replied my
uncle, proudly.
"Yes, my dear," broke in Susurrans, feeling strong
under his wife's protection, "he made me get drunk,
and he and his nephew ate my chickens. They took
away my hat and threw my keg into the river, and
now the blackguard wants to force me to dine with
him at the Dauphin and, at my age, play the part of
an attorney's clerk."
"That will do! I will go directly and tell M.
Dulciter that you intend to take his and his clerk's
place at dinner."
"You see, Madame," said my uncle, "your hus-
band is drunk. He doesn't know what he is talking
about. If you take my advice, put him to bed the
minute you reach home, and give him some camomile
tea every two hours. While holding him up before,
i8o MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
I had the chance to feel his pulse, and I assure you,
he is not at all well."
"Oh, you rascal, you blackguard, you revolu-
tionist! You dare to tell my wife I am sick from
having drunk too much, while you yourself are
drunk! Wait, I am going to Dulciter's this instant,
and you will hear from him directly."
"Madame," said Page, with the utmost sang-
froid, "you can't help seeing that this man is talking
wildly. You would be untrue to your wifely duties
if you would not make your husband take camomile
tea, according to M. Rathery's orescription. He
certainly is the most skilful doctor in the bailiwick,
and he rewards this madman for his insults by saving
his life."
Susurrans was about to renew his asseverations.
"That will do," his wife said to him, "I see these
gentlemen are right. You are so drunk you cannot
talk properly. Come with me right off, or I will
lock you out, and you may sleep wherever you can."
"That's right," said Page and my uncle simulta-
neously, and they were still laughing when they
reached the Dauphin. The first person they met in
the yarcJ was M. Minxit, who was just mounting
his horse ready to return to Corvol.
"By God," said my uncle, seizing his horse's
bridle, "you shall not go home to-night, Monsieur
Minxit. You are going to dine with us. We have
lost one table companion, but you are worth thirty
of him."
M. SUSURRANS IS HUNG TO A HOOK 1 8 1
"If it pleases you, Benjamin. Hostler, take my
horse back to the stable, and tell them to keep a bed
for me."
CHAPTER XIII
HOW MY UNCLE SPENT THE NIGHT IN PRAYER FOR
HIS SISTER'S SAFE DELIVERY
MY time is precious, dear readers, and I suppose
yours is, too. So I shall not amuse myself by de-
scribing this memorable supper. You ^know the
guests well enough to form an idea of how things
went.
My uncle left the Hotel du Dauphin at midnight,
advancing three steps and retreating two, like some
pilgrims of old who vowed to go to Jerusalem at that
pace. On entering the house, he saw a light in
Machecourt's room, and thinking that his brother-
in-law was scribbling off some writ, he went in to
bid him good-night. My grandmother was in the
pains of child-birth. The midwife, frightened at my
uncle's unexpected appearance at that hour, went to
notify him officially of the event that was about to
take place. Benjamin remembered through the
mists that obscured his brain that in the first year
of her marriage his sister had had a very painful
delivery which endangered her life. Immediately
he dissolved in a flood of tears.
"Alas," he cried, in a voice loud enough to waken
182
(}lath&nj at
arid how he, "drink*
the entire Rue des Moulins, "my dear sister is going
to die. Alas ! She is going to "
"Madame Lalande," cried my grandmother from
her bed, "put that drunken dog out."
"Please go out, Monsieur Rathery," said Madame
Lalande. "There is not the slightest danger. The
child is coming head first, and in an hour your sister
will be delivered."
But Benjamin kept on crying, "Alas, my dear
sister is going to die."
Machecourt, seeing the midwife's remarks had
had no effect, thought it his duty to intervene.
"Yes, Benjamin, my friend, my brother, the child
is coming head first. Do me the favour and go to
bed, please."
So spoke my grandfather.
"And you, Machecourt, my friend, my brother,"
answered my uncle, "please, do me the favour and
go-
My grandmother, realising she could not count
on Machecourt to take any determined step with
Benjamin, decided to put him out doors herself.
With lamblike docility my uncle suffered himself
to be pushed outside. His mind was soon made up.
He would spend the night with Page, who was
snoring like a blacksmith's bellows on one of the
tables at the Dauphin. But in passing the church,
it occurred to him to pray to God for his dear sister's
safe delivery. The weather had grown very cold
again, and the temperature was five or six degrees
i84 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
below freezing point. Paying no attention to the
cold, Benjamin knelt on the church steps, folded his
hands as he had seen them do at his dear sister's, and
began to murmur fragments of prayers. On begin-
ning his second Ave, sleep overcame him, and he
began to snore like his friend Page.
The next morning at five o'clock, when the sexton
came to ring the Angelus, he saw something like a
human form on its knees. At first, in his simplicity,
he thought it was a saint who had left his niche to
do penance. And he was about to carry him back
into the church when by the light of his lantern,
on coming nearer, he saw it was my uncle with an
inch of ice on his back and an icicle half a yard long
hanging from his nose.
"Hello, Monsieur Rathery! Hello!" he shouted
in Benjamin's ear.
My uncle did not answer, and the sexton pro-
ceeded calmly to ring the Angelus. It was not until
he had quite finished that he returned to M. Rathery.
In case there should still be some life left, he lifted
him to his shoulders like a sack and carried him to
his sister's. My grandmother had already been
delivered two good hours, so the neighbours who
had spent the night with her could turn their atten-
tion to Benjamin. They placed him on a mat-
tress before the hearth, wrapped him in warm cover-
ings, and put a hot brick at his feet. In their
zeal, they would have prepared to put him in the
oven. Gradually my uncle thawed out. His queue,
MY UNCLE SPENDS NIGHT IN PRAYER 185
which had been as stiff as his sword, began to weep
on the bolster, his joints relaxed, his speech returned
and the first use he made of it was to call for
mulled wine. They quickly made him a whole ket-
tlerul. When he had drunk half of it, he fell into
such a sweat that they thought he was going to turn
into fluid. He swallowed the rest of the mulled
wine, went to sleep again, and at eight o'clock in
the morning was fresh and well. Had the priest
made an official report of these facts, my uncle would
surely have been canonised. They probably would
have made him patron saint of the hosts of the
inns. And, without flattering him, he would certainly
have made a magnificent sign for an inn, with his
queue and his red coat.
More than a week had passed since my grand-
mother's delivery, and she was already thinking of
her churching. This sort of quarantine imposed by
the canons of the church resulted in serious incon-
veniences to the whole family in general, and to
her in particular. In the first place, when any
important event, a shocking bit of scandal, for in-
stance, ruffled the smooth surface of the neighbour-
hood, she could not gossip with her neighbours in
the Rue des Moulins, which was a cruel privation.
Moreover, she was obliged to send Gaspard to the
market and the butchers wrapped in a kitchen-
apron, and Gaspard either lost the money playing
corks, or brought home a piece of neck instead of a
leg. Or, if he was sent for a cabbage for the soup,
1 86 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
he did not return until after the soup had been made
with something else. Benjamin would laugh, Mache-
court would swear, and my grandmother would give
Gaspard a whipping.
One day, irritated because he had to eat a calf's
head without onions on account of Gaspard's tardi-
ness, my grandfather said to my grandmother:
"Why don't you do the marketing yourself?"
"Why! Why!" replied my grandmother. "Be-
cause I cannot go to mass until Mme. Lalande has
been paid."
"Why the devil, dear sister, didn't you wait with
your confinement till you had some money?"
"Ask your simpleton brother-in-law why he has
not brought me a miserable six-franc piece for a
month."
"That is to say, if you were not to get any money
for six months, you would remain shut up at home
as in quarantine for that length of time?" asked
Benjamin.
"Of course," replied my grandmother, "because
if I were to go out before having been to mass, the
priest would talk against me from the pulpit and
the people would point their fingers at me in the
streets."
"Then tell the priest to send you his housekeeper
to keep house for you. God is too just to require
Machecourt to eat calf's head without onions simply
because you presented him with a seventh child."
Fortunately that six-franc piece so ardently
MY UNCLE SPENDS NIGHT IN PRAYER 187
craved came in the company of a few others, and
my grandmother was able to go to mass.
On returning home with Mme. Lalande, she found
my uncle stretched out in Machecourt's leather arm-
chair, his heels resting on the andirons and a bowl
of mulled wine next to him. For I must tell you that
ever since his recovery, Benjamin, out of gratitude
to the mulled wine that had saved his life, took
enough of it every morning to satisfy two sea cap-
tains. To justify this additional feat, he maintained
that his temperature was still below zero.
"Benjamin," my grandmother said to him, "you
must do me a favour."
"A favour! What can I do to please you, dear
sister?"
"Can't you guess, Benjamin? You must be the
baby's godfather."
Benjamin, who had not guessed it at all, but, on
the contrary, was taken entirely unawares, shook
his head and emitted a prolonged "But —
"What," said my grandmother, her eyes flashing,
"you don't mean to refuse?"
"Not at all, dear sister, not at all, but—
"But what? Your eternal buts make me impa-
tient."
"Well, you see, I have never been a godfather,
and I really shouldn't know what to do."
"A tremendous difficulty ! You will be told what
to do. I will ask cousin Guillaumot to give you
some lessons."
1 88 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
"I have the utmost faith in cousin Guillaumot's
talents and zeal; but I fear the prience of being a
godfather is not suited to my intelligence. You will
do better to take a godfather already endowed with
the requisite knowledge. There's Gaspard, for in-
stance. He's a choir boy and would suit per-
fectly."
"Come, Monsieur Rathery," said Madame
Lalande, "you ought to accept your sister's invita-
tion. It is a family duty."
"I see, Madame Lalande," said Benjamin.
"Though I am not rich, I have the reputation of
doing things well, and you would rather deal with
me than with Gaspard. Isn't that so?"
"Oh, fie, Benjamin. Oh, fie, Monsieur Rathery,"
exclaimed my grandmother and Madame Lalande
simultaneously.
"See here, my dear sister, frankly I have abso-
lutely no desire to be a godfather. I will gladly act
toward my nephew as if I had held him over the
baptismal font. I will listen with satisfaction to the
annual congratulations that he will extend to me on
my birthday, and I promise to think them beautiful
even if they have been composed by Millot-Rataut.
I will let him kiss me every New Year's Day, and I
will give him either a jumping Jack or a pair of
breeches, whichever you prefer. I shall even feel
flattered if you name him Benjamin. But to go
plant myself like a great simpleton in front of the
baptismal font and hold a candle in my hand — oh,
MY UNCLE SPENDS NIGHT IN PRAYER 189
no, dear sister, you mustn't ask it of me. It goes
against my manly dignity. I should be afraid that
Djhiarcos would laugh in my face. Besides, how can
I guarantee that the squeding youngster will re-
nounce Satan and his works? Who will prove to me
that he will renounce Satan and his works? If the
godfather's responsibility is a mere sham, as some
think, what's a godfather for? What's a godmother
for? What are two securities for instead of one?
Why need my signature be endorsed by another?
But if the responsibility is a serious one, then why
should I incur the consequences? Our soul is our
most precious possession. Then isn't it crazy to
pledge it for someone else's soul? Besides, why are
you in such a hurry to have the poor little worm
baptised? Is he a pate de foie gras or a Mayence
ham which would spoil if it were not salted without
delay? Wait until he is twenty-five. Then he will
at least be able to answer for himself, and if he
needs a security I shall know what I have to do.
Until he is eighteen, your son will not be able to
enlist in the army; until he is twenty-one, he will
not be able to make a civil contract; until he is
twenty-five, he will not be able to marry without
your consent and Machecourt's. And yet you expect
him at the age of nine days to have sufficient dis-
crimination to choose a religion. Come now, you
can see for yourself it is irrational."
"Oh, dear Madame Machecourt," cried the nurse,
frightened at my uncle's heterodox logic, "your
i9o MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
brother is one of the damned. Don't let him he
your child's godfather. It would bring him mis-
fortune."
"Madame Lalande," said Benjamin, in a severe
tone, "a course in midwifery is not a course in logic.
It would be mean in me to argue with you. I will
limit myself to one question. Were the converts
that Saint John baptised in the Jordan for a sesterce
and a cornet of dried dates, carried there from
Jerusalem on their nurses' arms?"
"On my word," said Madame Lalande, embar-
rassed by the objection, "I am ready to believe it."
"What, Madame, you are ready to believe it!
Is that the way for a midwife who has had religious
instruction to talk? Well, since that's the way you
take it, I will propose the following dilemma "
"Let us alone with your dilemmas," interrupted
my grandmother. "What does Madame Lalande
know about a dilemma?"
"What, Madame!" exclaimed the nurse, piqued
at my grandmother's remark. "I don't know what
a dilemma is? I, the wife of a surgeon, don't know
what a dilemma is? Go on, Monsieur Rathery, I
am listening to you."
"There's no need to," replied my grandmother,
dryly. "I have decided that Benjamin is to be the
child's godfather, and that settles it. No dilemma
in the world can excuse him from it."
"I appeal to Machecourt," cried Benjamin.
"Machecourt has condemned you in advance.
MY UNCLE SPENDS NIGHT IN PRAYER 191
This morning he went to Corvol to invite Mademoi-
selle Minxit to be godmother."
"So you dispose of me without my consent," cried
my uncle. "You haven't even the consideration to
give me fair warning. What am I? Stuffed with
sawdust? A gingerbread mannikin? A fine figure
I shall cut with my five feet ten inches beside Made-
moiselle Minxit's five feet three. Her straight, an-
gular figure will look like a beribboned Maypole.
You know, the idea of walking beside her to church
has tormented me for six months, and my aversion
for the obligatory act has almost made me forego
the joy of becoming her husband."
"You see, Madame Lalande," said my grand-
mother, "what a joker Benjamin is. He loves Made-
moiselle Minxit passionately, and yet he can't help
laughing at her."
"Hum!" said the nurse.
Benjamin, who had forgotten Madame Lalande's
presence, realised he had been guilty of a lapsus
linguae. To escape his sister's reproaches, he has-
tened to declare that he consented to anything they
asked of him, and made off before the nurse left.
The baptism was to take place the following Sun-
day. My grandmother plunged into expense for
the occasion. She allowed Machecourt to invite all
his and my uncle's friends to a festal meal. Ben-
jamin, for his part, was fn a position to meet the
expenses that the generous role of godfather called
for. The government had just presented him with
i92 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
a hundred francs in reward of his zeal in propagat-
ing vaccination in the country and in restoring the
potato, which agriculturists and physicians had been
attacking, to a place of honour.
CHAPTER XIV
MY UNCLE'S SPEECH BEFORE THE BAILIFF
THE following Saturday, the day before the bap-
tism, my uncle was cited to appear before the bailiff
to hear himself sentenced, under penalty of imprison-
ment, to pay Monsieur Bonteint the sum of one
hundred and fifty francs ten sous six deniers for
merchandise sold to him. So read the summons,
the cost of which was four francs five sous. Another
man would have lamented his fate in all the tones of
elegy. But the soul of this great man was not
reached by the vicissitudes of fortune. The whirl-
wind of misery that society raises, the mist of tears
enshrouding it, did not rise to his height. His body,
it is true, was caught in the mire of humanity. When
he drank too much, he got a headache; when he
walked too far, he got tired; when the road was
muddy, he splashed himself up to his waist; and,
when he had no money to pay his score, the inn-
keeper charged it on his ledger. Yet, like the rock
whose base is beaten by the waves but whose top
shines in the sunlight, like the bird with its nest in the
thickets by the wayside and soaring up in the azure
skies, so Benjamin's soul, always bright and serene,
193
194 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
soared in a realm above the rest of humanity. He
had but two needs, the satisfaction of hunger and
thirst. And had the firmament fallen in pieces on the
earth and had only one bottle been left intact, my
uncle, sitting on the smoking ruins of a cosmic body,
would calmly have drunk down the contents to the
resurrection of the human race. To him the past was
nothing, and the future as yet was nothing. He
compared the past to an empty bottle, and the fu-
ture to a chicken ready for the spit.
"What care I," said he, "what sort of drink the
bottle contains? And as for the chicken, why
should I roast myself turning it round and round
before the fire? Perhaps exactly when it is finished
roasting, and the table is laid, and I have tied my
napkin on, some monster will come along and carry
away the smoking fowl in his jaws.
'Eternity and Nothingness !
Ye sombre caverns of the Past !'
cries the poet. For my part, all I should try to save
from the gloomy abyss would be my last red coat
if it were floating about within my reach. Life is
entirely in the present, and the present is the passing
moment. So, of what significance is the fortune or
the misfortune of a moment? Here is a beggar and
here is a millionaire. God says to them, 'You
have but a minute to remain upon earth.' This
minute gone, he grants them a second, then a third,
MY UNCLE'S SPEECH 195
and lets them live on like that to ninety. Do you
think the one is really happier than the other? All
the miseries that afflict man, man alone creates. The
pleasures he goes to so much trouble to get are
not worth a quarter of the effort he expends upon
them. He is like a hunter who scours the country
all day long for a thin hare or a tough partridge.
We boast of the superiority of our intelligence, but
what good does it do us that we can calculate the
course of the stars, that we can foretell almost to a
second when the moon will pass between the sun and
the earth, that we can traverse the ocean solitudes
with wooden boats or hempen sails, if we do not
know how to enjoy the blessings with which God
has equipped our existence. The animals that we
look down on as dumb brutes know how to get
more out of life than we do. The donkey pastures
at ease in the grass without troubling whether it will
grow again. It doesn't occur to the bear to guard a
farmer's flocks so as to have warm mittens and a fur
cap in the winter time. The hare doesn't beat the
drum in a regiment in the hope of earning feed for
his old age. The vulture does not get a position as
a letter-carrier in order to wear a beautiful gold
necklace around its bare neck. They are all content
with what nature has given them, with the bed she
made for them in the grass, with the roof she built
for them under the blue, starry firmament.
"As soon as a ray of light shines on the plain, the
bird begins to twitter on its branch, the insect hums
196 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
around the bushes, the fish leaps to the surface of its
pool, the lizard comes out on the warm stones of
its wall. If a shower falls from the clouds, each
takes refuge in its hiding-place and waits sleeping
peacefully until the sun shines again the next day.
Why doesn't man do likewise?
"I hope it won't offend the great King Solomon,
but the ant is the stupidest of animals. Instead of
playing in the fields in the loveliest season of the
year and sharing in the glorious festival that heaven
bestows on the earth for six months in the year it
wastes the whole summer piling up little scraps of
leaves. And when the ant city is finished, a wind
comes and sweeps it away under its wing."
Benjamin made Bonteint's process-server get drunk
•and used the stamped paper of the summons to wr-ap
some ointment in.
The bailiff before whom my uncle was to appear
was too important a personage for me to fail to
describe him. Besides, my grandfather on his death-
bed expressly urged me to do so, and I would not
fail in this pious duty for anything in the world.
The bailiff, like so many others, was born of poor
parents. His swaddling-clothes had been made of a
gendarme's old cloak, and he began his studies in
jurisprudence by cleaning his father's big sword and
currying his sorrel. I cannot explain to you
how the bailiff rose from the lowest rank of the
judicial hierarchy to the highest judicial position in
the neighbourhood. All I can say is that the lizard
MY UNCLE'S SPEECH 197
reaches the peaks of the high rocks as well as the
eagle.
The bailiff had a number of set ideas, among them
that he was a great personage. The lowliness of his
birth troubled him. He could not conceive how a
man like himself had not been born a gentleman.
He ascribed it to an error on the Creator's part.
He would have given his wife, his children, and his
clerk for a pitiful coat of arms. Nature had been
tolerably good to the bailiff. Though she had dealt
out intelligence to him in neither too large nor too
small a portion, yet she had added a large dose of
shrewdness and self-assurance. The bailiff was
neither stupid nor clever. He stood exactly between
the two camps; he never crossed over into the camp
of the people of intelligence, while he made frequent
incursions into the accessible territory of the others.
Since he was denied the wit of clever men, he con-
tented himself with the wit of fools — he made puns.
It was the duty of the lawyers and their wives to
think his puns very funny. His clerk had to spread
them among the people, and even explain them to
those dullards who at first failed to get the point.
Thanks to this agreeable social talent, the bailiff had
acquired the reputation of a man of wit in a certain
circle. But my uncle said he had purchased his repu-
tation with counterfeit coin.
Was the bailiff an honest man? I should not
like to take it upon myself to assert the contrary.
You know the code of laws gives an accurate defini-
198 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
tion of the concept robber, and society looks upon
all those who are not included in the definition as
honest people, and the bailiff was one of those not
included in the definition. By various machinations
he succeeded in conducting not only the business, but
even the pleasures of the town. As a magistrate,
he was not a personage to be highly recommended.
He thoroughly understood the law, to be sure, but
when it went counter to his likes or his dislikes, he
simply set it aside. The charge was made against
him that one scale of his balance was of gold and
the other of wood, and as a matter of fact, I don't
know how, but his friends were always right and
his enemies always wrong. An offence always in-
curred the highest penalty of the law, and if the
bailiff could have added to it, he would have done so
with a will. Nevertheless the law cannot always be
twisted to suit one's purposes; so, when the bailiff
was obliged to pass sentence upon a man whom- he
feared or from whom he hoped for something, he
got out of the dilemma by declining to pronounce
judgment, and then got his following to boast of his
impartiality. The bailiff courted universal admira-
tion. He cordially, but secretly, detested those who
had any sort of superiority that cast him into the
shade. If you pretended to believe in his impor-
tance, even if you sought his protection, you made
him the happiest of men. But if you failed to take
your hat off to him, the insult buried itself so deeply
in his memory and made such a wound that if you
MY UNCLE'S SPEECH 199
and he lived to be a hundred he never would have
forgiven you. So woe to the unfortunate who did
not salute the bailiff. If some matter brought the
man to court, the bailiff would know a skilful way
of treating him roughly so as to drive him to show
lack of respect. Then vengeance became duty, and
he had the man thrown in prison, all the while de-
ploring the sad necessity that his office imposed upon
him. Often, even, to make people believe in his
grief, he carried hypocrisy so far as to take to his
bed, and on special occasions even had himself bled.
The bailiff paid court to God just as he did to
the earthly powers. He never absented himself
from high mass, and his place was always in the
very middle of the vestrymen's pew. That brought
him every Sunday a share of the blessed bread and
also the cure's protection. Could he have had an
official report drawn up testifying to his having
attended divine service, he undoubtedly would have
done so. But these little faults were compensated
for by brilliant qualities. No one understood better
than he how to organise a ball at the town's ex-
pense or a banquet in honour of the Due de Niver-
nais. On such festive occasions he was magnificent
in his dignity, his appetite, and his puns. Lamoignon
or President Mole would have been small beside
him. For ten years he had been hoping to receive
the cross of Saint Louis in reward for the eminent
services he rendered the city. And when Lafayette
was given the cross after his American cam-
200 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
paigns, he muttered to himself against the injustice.
Such was the bailiff morally. As for his body,
it was a fat figure, although he had not yet attained
his full majesty. His figure resembled an ellipse
enlarged at the lower end. He might have been
compared to an ostrich-egg on two legs. Perfidious
nature, which lets the manchineel tree cast a broad,
heavy shade beneath a fiery sky, bestowed upon the
bailiff the appearance of an honest man. And he
loved to make an impression. It was a glorious day
in his life when he could go from the courthouse
to the church escorted by the firemen.
The bailiff always stood as stiff as a statue on a
pedestal. If you had not known him, you would
have said he had a plaster of Burgundy pitch or a
broad blister between his shoulders. On the street
he walked as if carrying the holy sacrament. His
step was as invariably the same length as a yard-
stick. A shower of spears would not have made
him lengthen it an inch. With the bailiff as his
single instrument an astronomer could have measured
an arc of the meridian.
My uncle did not hate the bailiff. He did not
even honour him with his contempt. But in pres-
ence of such moral baseness he felt something like
nausea of his soul, and sometimes he said the man
had the effect upon him of a great toad squatting on
a velvet arm-chair.
As for the bailiff, he hated Benjamin with the
whole force of his bilious soul. Benjamin was not
MY UNCLE'S SPEECH 201
ignorant of this, but it made very little difference
to him.
My grandmother, fearing a conflict between these
two such opposite natures, wanted Benjamin to
refrain from going to court. But the great man,
confident of the strength of his will, disdained this
timid counsel. His one concession was to abstain
from his customary allowance of mulled wine on
Saturday morning.
Bonteint's lawyer proved that his client had a
right to a verdict of imprisonment for debt. When
he had exhausted every argument, the bailiff asked
Benjamin what he had to say in his defence.
"I have only a simple remark to make," said my
uncle, "but it is worth more than Monsieur's whole
speech, because it is irrefutable. I am five feet ten
inches above the level of the sea and six inches above
the average height. So, I think "
"Monsieur Rathery," interrupted the bailiff, "no
matter how great a man you may be, you have no
right to joke with justice."
"If I wanted to joke," said my uncle, "it would
not be with so powerful a personage as your Hon-
our, whose justice, moreover, does not joke. But
when I affirm that I am five feet ten inches above
the level of the sea, I am not making a joke. I
am offering a serious defence. Your Honour can
have me measured if he doubts the truth of my state-
ment. I think—
"Monsieur Rathery," snapped the bailiff, "if you
202 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
continue in this vein, I shall be obliged to forbid
your talking."
"Not necessary," answered my uncle. "I am
done. So I think," he added, bringing his words
out precipitately, "that the body of a man of my
size is not to be seized for fifty miserable crowns."
"According to you," said the bailiff, "the seizure
of the body can be practised only on one of your
arms, or one of your legs, or perhaps even on your
queue."
"In the first place," answered my uncle, "your
Honour will note that my queue is not in question.
Secondly, I make no such assumption as your Honour
attributes to me. I was born undivided, and I intend
to remain undivided all my life. But the security is
worth at least double the amount of the debt. I beg
your Honour to order that the sentence for seizure
of my body shall not be executed until Bonteint
shall have furnished me with three more red coats."
"Monsieur Rathery, this is not a tavern. I beg
you to remember to whom you are talking. Your
remarks are as ill-considered as your person."
"Monsieur bailiff," answered my uncle, "I have
a good memory, and I know very well to whom
I am talking. I have been too carefully brought
up by my dear sister in the fear of God and the
gendarmes to allow me to forget it. As for taverns,
since you mention the subject, taverns are too highly
appreciated by respectable people to need my de-
fence of them. If we go to a tavern when we are
MY UNCLE'S SPEECH 203
thirsty, it is because we have not the privilege of
refreshing ourselves at the city's expense. The
tavern is the wine-cellar of those who have none,
and the wine-cellar of those who have one is noth-
ing, but a tavern without a sign. It ill becomes those
who drink a bottle of Burgundy and something else
for their dinner to abuse the poor devil who now
and then regales himself at the tavern with a pint
of Croix-Pataux. Those official orgies where men
get drunk toasting the king and the Due de Nivernais
are, stripped of fine speech, simply what the people
call drinking bouts. To get drunk at one's own
table is supposed to be more decent, but to get drunk
at a tavern is nobler and more profitable to the
public treasury. As to the consideration attaching
to my person, it is not so widespread as that which
Monsieur can claim for his person, inasmuch as I
enjoy the consideration of none but honest people.
However "
''Monsieur Rathery," cried the bailiff, finding no?
better and easier answer to the epigrams with which
my uncle was tormenting him, "you are insolent."
"So be it," replied Benjamin, knocking off a bit
of straw from the facing of his coat, "but I must in
conscience warn your Honour that this morning I
have kept within the strictest limits of temperance,
and if your Honour tries to make me denart from the
respect I owe your robe, I cannot be held responsible
for the consequences."
"Monsieur Rathery,0 exclaimed the bailiff, "your
204 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
allusions are an insult to the court. I fine you thirty
sous."
"Here are three francs," said my uncle, putting
a coin on the judge's green table. "Take your pay
out of that."
"Monsieur Rathery," cried the bailiff in exaspera-
tion, "leave the room."
"Monsieur bailiff, I have the honour to salute you.
My compliments to Madame your wife, if you
please."
"I fine you forty sous more," screamed the judge.
"What, a fine of forty sous for presenting my
compliments to Madame your wife."
And he went out.
"That devil of a man!" said the bailiff in the
evening to his wife. "I should never have supposed
that he would be so self-controlled. But let him look
out. I have issued a warrant for his arrest, and I
shall persuade Bonteint to execute it immediately.
He shall learn what it means to defy me. He can
wait long till I invite him to the festivities given by
the city, and if I can cut off his practice "
"For shame!" answered his wife. "Is that the
right way for a man who sits in the vestryman's pew
to talk? Besides, what has M. Rathery done to
you? He is such a jolly, cultured, delightful man."
"I will tell you what he has done to me, Madame.
He has dared to remind me that your father-in-law
was a gendarme, and said he is wittier and more
honest than I am. Is. that a small matter?"
MY UNCLE'S SPEECH 205
By the next morning my uncle had forgotten about
the warrant issued for his arrest. He started off
for church, powdered and solemn, Mademoiselle
Minxit on his right and his sword on his left. He was
followed by Page, who was evidently pleased by the
appearance he presented in his best brown coat; by
Arthus, whose abdomen was enveloped to a point
beyond its diameter by a waistcoat embroidered with
large branches and birds fluttering among them; by
Millot-Rataut, who wore a brick-coloured wig and
whose yellowish shinbones were dotted with black;
and by a great many others, whose names I do
not care to hand down to posterity. Parlanta alone
failed to answer to the call. Two violins squeaked
at the head of the procession. Machecourt and his
wife brought up the rear. Benjamin, always munifi-
cent, scattered sweetmeats and the pennies from the
vaccination money. Gaspard, very proud to serve
as a pocket, walked by his side, carrying the sweet-
meats in a big bag.
CHAPTER XV-
HOW PARLANTA ARRESTED MY UNCLE, WHILE
ACTING AS GODFATHER, AND PUT
HIM IN PRISON
BUT lo ! Quite another ceremony was in store for
him! Parlanta had been expressly ordered by Bon-
teint' and the bailiff to execute the warrant during
the ceremony. He had concealed his assistants in
the vestibule of the court-house, and himself awaited
the procession at the church portal.
As soon as he saw my uncle's three-cornered hat
rise above the steps of Vieille-Rome, he went up to
him and summoned him in the name of the king to
follow him to prison.
"Parlanta," answered my uncle, "what you are
doing 511 accords with the rules of French polite-
ness. Couldn't you have waited until to-morrow,
and come and dined with us to-day?"
"If it makes very much difference to you, I will
wait. But I'll tell you, the bailiff's orders were very
explicit, and I run the risk of bringing his ven-
geance down on me in this life and the next."
"In that case, do your duty," said Benjamin; and
he asked Page to take his place beside Mademoiselle
206
PARLANTA ARRESTS MY UNCLE 207
Minxit. Then, bowing with all the grace that his
five feet ten inches would allow, he said :
"You see, Mademoiselle, that I am forced to
leave you. I beg you to believe that nothing less
than a summons in the name of His Majesty could
induce me to do such a thing. I wish Parlanta had
allowed me to enjoy the pleasure of this ceremony
to the end, but these sheriff's officers are like death.
They snatch their prey anywhere, they tear it vio-
lently from the arms of the loved one as a child
catches a butterfly by its gauze wings and tears it
from the rose's heart."
"It is as disagreeable to me as to you," said Made-
moiselle Minxit, pulling a long face. "Your friend
is short and as round as a ball, and he wears a wig a
marteaux. I shall look like a bean pole beside him."
"What can I do about it?" said Benjamin, dryly,
hurt by such egoism. "I cannot make you any
shorter, or M. Page any thinner, and I cannot lend
him my queue."
Benjamin took leave of the company and followed
Parlanta, whistling his favourite air:
"Marlbrough is off to war."
He halted a moment at the threshold of the prison
to cast a last glance at the free spaces about to be
shut off behind him. He saw his sister standing
motionless, holding her husband's arm and looking
after Benjamin sadly. At the sight of her look,
ao8 MY UNCLE BENTAMIN
Benjamin quickly shut the door behind him and
rushed into the prison-yard.
That night my grandfather and his wife paid
him a visit. They found him standing on the steps,
throwing the rest of his sweetmeats to his com-
panions in captivity and laughing gleefully to see
them scramble for them.
"What the devil are you doing?" said my grand-
father.
"You see,*' answered Benjamin, "I am finishing
the baptismal ceremony. Don't you find that these
men falling over each other to pick up insipid sweet-
meats are a true picture of society? Isn't that the
way the poor inhabitants of the earth push each
other, trample on each other, throw each other
down, to snatch at the gifts God has thrown them?
Isn't that the way the strong man tramples on the
weak man? Isn't that the way the weak man bleeds
and cries? Isn't that the way the man who has taken
everything arrogantly scorns and insults the man
whom he has left nothing? And isn't that the way
when the man who has nothing dares to complain
the other kicks him? These poor devils are breath-
less, covered with sweat, their fingers are bruised,
their faces torn. Not one of them has come out of
the struggle without a scratch. Had they listened
to their real interests would they not have done
better to share the sweetmeats like brothers instead
of fighting over them like enemies?"
"Possibly," answered Machecourt. "But try not
PARLANTA ARRESTS MY UNCLE 209
to be too bored this evening and be sure to sleep well
to-night, because to-morrow morning you will be
free."
"How so?" answered Benjamin.
"To get you out of here we have sold our little
vineyard in Choulot."
"Is the contract signed?" inquired Benjamin,
anxiously.
"Not yet," said my grandfather, "but we are to
meet to-night to sign it."
"Now listen, Machecourt, and you, my dear sister.
Listen very carefully to what I am going to say.
If you sell your vineyard to get me out of Bonteint's
clutches, the first use I shall make of my liberty
will be to leave your house. And you will never
in all your life see me again."
"Nevertheless," said Machecourt, "it's got to be
done. A brother can't do differently. I can't let
you stay in prison when I have the means of getting
you out. You take things as a philosopher, but I am
not a philosopher. As long as you are in this place,
I shan't be able to eat a morsel or drink a glass of
white wine."
"And I," said my grandmother, "do you think
I can get along without seeing you any more?
Didn't our mother on her death-bed tell me to take
care of you? Haven't I brought you UD? Don't I
look upon vou as r^e oldest of mv children? And
my poor children, thevVe a sad sight. Since vouVe
been gone, you'd think there was a coffin in the
210 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
house. They all wanted to come along to see you.
And Nanette absolutely refused to touch her cake.
She had to keep it for uncle Benjamin, who was in
prison and had only black bread to eat."
"This is too much," said Benjamin, clutching my
grandfather's shoulders. "Go away, Machecourt,
and you too, my dear sister, go away, please do.
You will make me be guilty of a weakness. And I
warn you again, if you sell your vineyard to buy me
out of here, I will never in my life set eyes on you
again."
"Nonsense, you silly!" answered my grand-
mother, "isn't a brother worth more than a vine-
yard? If you had the chance, wouldn't you do the
same for us that we're doing for you? And when
you get to be rich, aren't you going to help us take
care of our children? With your profession and
your talents you can return us a hundredfold what
we are giving you to-day. And then, my God. what
will people say of us if we should leave you behind
the bars for a debt of a hundred and fifty francs?
Come, Benjamin, be a good brother, don't be obsti-
nate, don't make us all unhappy by insisting on stay-
ing here."
While my grandmother was speaking, Benjamin
kept his head hidden in his hands, trying to repress
the tears that were gathering under his eyelids.
"Machecourt," he cried suddenly, "I can't stand
this any longer. Tell Boutron to bring me a little
glass of brandy, and come and kiss me. See," he
PARLANTA ARRESTS MY UNCLE 211
said, squeezing him to his chest so hard that he
almost cried out with pain, "you are the first man
I have ever kissed and these are the first tears I
have shed since I used to be flogged."
And my poor uncle actually burst into tears. But
the jailer brought two small glasses of brandy, and
Benjamin had no sooner emptied his than he turned
as bright and serene as an April sky after a shower.
My grandmother tried again to make him change
his mind, but her words had no more effect than the
moon's rays upon an icicle.
The only thing that troubled him was that the
jailer had seen him cry. So Machecourt willy-nilly
had to keep his vineyard.
CHAPTER XVI
A BREAKFAST IN PRISON HOW MY UNCLE GOT OUT
OF PRISON
THE next morning, as my uncle was taking a walk
in the prison-yard, whistling a familiar air, Arthus
entered, followed by three men with baskets on their
backs covered with white linen.
"Good morning, Benjamin," he said, "we have
come to breakfast with you, since you cannot come
to breakfast with us."
At the same time came filing in Page, Rapin,
Guillerand, Millot-Rataut, and Machecourt. Par-
lanta brought up the rear, looking a little abashed.
My uncle went up to him, and, taking his hand,
said:
"Well, Parlanta, I hope you don't bear me any
ill-will for making you lose a good dinner yester-
day."
"On the contrary," answered Parlanta, "I was
afraid you would be angry with me for not allow-
ing you to go through with the baptism."
"I want you to know, Benjamin," broke in Page,
"that we have assessed ourselves to get you out of
here. But, as we have no ready cash, we act as if
212
A BREAKFAST IN PRISON 213
money had not been invented. We give Bonteint our
respective services, each according to his profession.
I will plead his first case for him, Parlanta will write
two summonses for him, Arthus will draw up his
will, Rapin will give him two or three consultations
that will cost him dearer than he thinks; Guillerand
will give his children some excuse for grammar les-
sons, Rataut, who is a poet and therefore is nothing,
engages himself on his honour to buy of him all the
coats he may need for the next two years, which, in
my opinion and his, does not engage him to very
much."
"And does Bonteint accept?" said Benjamin.
"Accept?" said Page, awhy, he receives value
amounting to more than five hundred francs. It was
Rapin who arranged this matter with him yesterday.
The only thing left to do is to draw up the docu-
ments."
"Well," said my uncle, "I will contribute my share
in this good work. I will treat him free of charge
the next two times he gets sick. If I kill him the
first time, his wife shall inherit the privilege of the
second. As for you, Machecourt, I'll let you sub-
scribe a jug of white wine."
Meantime Arthus had had the table set at the
jailer's. He took from the baskets the dishes, the
contents of all of which had become somewhat mixed
together, and placed them in their order on the
table.
"Come," he shouted, "let us sit down, and a
214 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
truce to your talking. I don't like to be disturbed
when I am eating. You'll have plenty of time to
chatter at dessert."
The breakfast did not taste at all of the place in
which it was partaken. Machecourt alone was a
little sad, for the arrangement made with Bonteint
by my uncle's friends seemed to him like a joke.
"Come, Machecourt," cried Benjamin, "your
glass is always in your hand, full or empty. Are
you the prisoner here, or am I? By the way, gen-
tlemen, do you know that Machecourt came near
perpetrating a good deed yesterday? He wanted
to sell his goocl vineyard to pay Bonteint my
ransom."
"Magnificent!" cried Page.
"Succulent!" said Arthus.
"Morality in action," remarked Guillerand.
"Gentlemen," interjected Rapin, "virtue must be
honoured wherever one is fortunate enough to find
it. I propose, therefore, that every time Mache-
court sits down at table with us, he shall be given
an arm-chair."
*r "So ordered," cried all the guests together, "and
here's to Machecourt's health!"
"Upon my word !" said my uncle, "I don't see why
people are so afraid of prison. Isn't this fowl as
tender and this Bordeaux as delicious on this side of
the bars as on the other?"
"Yes," said Guillerand, "as long as there is grass
near the wall to which it is fastened the goat does
A BREAKFAST IN PRISON 215
not feel its tether, but when the place is stripped, it
begins to worry and tries to break it."
"To go from the grass that grows in the valley
to that which grows on the mountain is the liberty
of the goat," my uncle answered, "but man's liberty
does not consist in merely doing just as he pleases.
He whose body has been imprisoned but who has
been left the liberty to think at his will is a hundred
times freer than he whose soul is held captive in
the chains of an odious occupation. The prisoner
undoubtedly passes sad hours in contemplating
through his bars the road that winds through the
plain and loses itself in the bluish shade of some
far-off forest. He would like to be the poor woman
who leads her cow along the road, twirling her
distaff, or the poor wood-cutter who goes back
loaded with boughs to his hut smoking above the
trees. But this liberty to be where one likes, to go
straight ahead until one is weary or is stopped by a
ditch — who possesses it? Is not the paralytic a
prisoner in his bed, the merchant in his shop, the
clerk in his office, the burgher in his little town, the
king in his kingdom, and God himself in the icy
circumference that encircles the world? You go
breathless and dripping with perspiration over a
road burned with the sun. Here are tall trees that
spread their lofty tiers of verdure beside you, and
ironically shake their yellow leaves on your head as
if in sport. I am sure you would like very much to
rest a moment in their shade and wipe your feet on
216 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
the moss that carpets their roots. But between them
and you there are six feet of wall, or the sharp-
pointed bars of an iron grating. Arthus, Rapin,
and all of you who have only a stomach, who after
breakfast can only think of dinner — I don't know
whether you will understand me. But Millot-Rataut,
who is a tailor and composes Christmas songs, he
will understand me. I have often desired to follow
(he wind-driven cloud in its wanderings across the
sky. Often when, resting my elbows on the win-
dow-sill, and dreamily following the moon which
seemed to look at me like a human face, I have had
the desire to fly away like a bubble of air toward
those mysterious regions of solitude that spread
above my head, and I should have given all the
world to sit for a moment on one of those gigantic
peaks which rend the white surface of that planet.
Was I not then also a captive on the earth as truly
as the poor prisoner within the high walls of his
prison?"
"Gentlemen," said Page, "one thing must be ad-
mitted. To the rich man the prison is made too
pleasant and comfortable. It punishes him the way
a spoiled child is punished, like that nymph who
whipped Cupid with a rose. If the rich man is
allowed to take into prison his kitchen, wine-cellar,
library, parlour, then he is not a convict undergoing
punishment, but a burgher who has changed his
lodgings. Here you are sitting before a nice fire,
wrapped in the wadding of your dressing-gown.
A BREAKFAST IN PRISON 217
With your feet on the andirons you digest your
food in your stomach fragrant with truffles and
champagne. The snow comes fluttering down on
the bars of your window while you blow the bluish
smoke of your cigar to the ceiling. You dream, you
think, you build castles in the air or write verses.
At your side is your newspaper, that friend which
you leave, which you call back, and which you cast
away for good when it becomes too tiresome. What
is there in such a situation, I should like to know,
that resembles a penalty? Haven't you passed
hours, days, entire weeks like that, without leaving
your house? And while you are passing your time
in this manner, what is the judge doing, who has had
the barbarity to condemn you to this torture? He
is hearing cases from eleven o'clock in the morning,
shivering in his black robe and listening to the
rigmarole of some lawyer who repeats the same
thing over and over again. And while thus occu-
pied catarrh seizes his lungs with its numbing clutch,
or chilblains bite his toes with their sharp teeth.
You say that you are not free ! On the contrary, you
are a hundred times freer than in your house. Your
whole day belongs to you. You get up when you
like, go to bed when you like, do what you like,
and you don't have to shave either.
"Take Benjamin, for instance. He is a prisoner.
Do you think Bonteint has served him such a bad
turn in having him shut up here? He often had to
rise before the street lamps were out. With one
218 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
stocking on wrong side out, he went from door to
door, inspecting this one's tongue and feeling that
one's pulse. When he had finished on one side, he
had to begin on the other. He splashed himself on
the cross-roads up to his queue ; and the peasants gen-
erally had nothing to offer him but curds and black
bread. When he came home at night very tired, had
settled himself comfortably in his bed, and was be-
ginning to taste the joys of the early hours of sleep,
he would be brutally awakened and called to the
mayor choking with indigestion, or to the bailiff's
wife who was having a miscarriage. Here he is
free of all this bother and worry. He is as well off
here as a rat in a Dutch cheese. Bonteint has made
him a present of a little income, which he is con-
suming like a philosopher. Verily he is like the lily
of the Gospel. He bleeds not, neither does he pre-
scribe purgatives, and yet is well fed; he toils not,
neither does he spin, and yet is arrayed in a magnifi-
cent red robe. Upon my word, we are fools to pity
him, and enemies to his comfort to try to get him
out of here."
"It is comfortable here, I grant you," answered
my uncle, "but I'd rather be uncomfortable else-
where. That shall not prevent me from admitting
Page's contention that not only is the prison too
pleasant for the rich man, but too pleasant for every-
body. It is undoubtedly hard to cry to the law when
it scourges a poor, unfortunate fellow, 'Strike
harder, you don't hurt him enough.' But we must
A BREAKFAST IN PRISON 219
also guard against that unintelligent, short-sighted
philanthropy which sees nothing beyond his misfor-
tune. Real philosophers, like Guillerand, like Mil-
lot-Rataut, like Parlanta, in a word, like all of us,
should consider men only en masse,, as we consider
a wheat field. A social question should always be
regarded from the standpoint of the public interest.
You have distinguished yourself by a fine feat of
arms, and the king decorates you with the cross of
Saint Louis. Do you think it's from goodwill
toward yourself, in the interest of your own indi-
vidual glory that His Majesty authorises you to wear
his gracious image on your breast? Ah, no, my poor
brave! It is in his own interest first, and in that of
the State, next. It is in order that those who, like
you, have hot blood in their veins, may imitate your
example, seeing how generously you have been re-
warded. Now, suppose that, instead of a good deed,
you have committed a crime. You have killed, not
three or four men who are different from you be-
cause they don't wear the same kind of coat-collar
that you do, but a good burgher of your own country.
The judge has sentenced you to death, and the king
has refused to pardon you. There is nothing left
for you now but to make your general confession and
begin your lamentation. Now, what feeling moved
the judge to pass this sentence upon you? Did he
^EJsh to rid society of you, as when one kills a mad
dog, or to punish you, as when one whips a bad
boy? In the first place, if his object had been
220 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
simply to cut you off from society, a very deep cell
with a very thick door and a loop-hole for a win-
dow would have been quite sufficient. Then the
judge often condemns to death a man who has at-
tempted to commit suicide, and to prison a poor
fellow to whom he knows that the prison will be a
welcome place of refuge. Is it to punish them
that he grants these two good-for-nothings precisely
what they ask for, that he performs for one, to
whom existence is a torture, an operation that ends
his life, and that he gives to the other, who has
neither bread nor a roof over his head, a place of
refuge? The judge has but one object in view. By
punishing you he wants to frighten those who would
be tempted to follow your example.
" 'People, look out, don't kill,' that's all the
judge's sentence means. If you could substitute a
mannikin for yourself who looks like you and put him
under the knife, it would be all the same to the
judge. If even after the executioner had cut off your
head and shown it to the people he could resuscitate
you, I am very sure he would willingly do so. For,
after all, the judge is a good man, and he would
not like to have his cook kill a chicken before his
eyes.
"They cry aloud, and you proclaim it too, that it is
better to let ten guilty men go unpunished than to
condemn one innocent man. That's the most de-
plorable of all the absurdities to which modern fash-
ionable philanthropy has given birth. It is an anti-
A BREAKFAST IN PRISON 221
social principle. I, for my part, maintain that it is
better to condemn ten innocent men than to acquit a
single guilty man."
At these words all the guests raised a great out-
cry against my uncle.
"No, indeed," said my uncle, "I am not joking.
This is no subject for laughter. I express a strong,
firm, a long-settled conviction. The whole city pities
the innocent man who mounts the scaffold. The
newspapers raise lamentations, and your poets
make him the martyred hero of their dramas. But
how many innocent men perish in your rivers, on
your highways, in your mine pits, or even in your
workshops, crushed by the ferocious teeth of your
machines, those gigantic animals that seize a man by
surprise and swallow him before your eyes, without
your being able to help him. Yet their death hardly
wrings an exclamation from you. You pass by, and
after you have gone a few steps you think no more
about it. You even don't think of mentioning it to
your wife at dinner. The next day the newspaper
buries him in a corner of its pages, throws over his
body a few lines of heavy prose, and all is ended.
Why this indifference for one and this superabund-
ance of pity for the other? Why ring the funeral
knell of the one with a little bell and of the other
with a big one? Is a jydge's mistake a more ter-
rible accident than an overturned stage-coach or
a deranged machine? Do not my innocents make
as big a hole in society as yours? Do they not leave
222 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
the wife a widow and the children orphans as well
as yours?
"Undoubtedly it is not pleasant to go to the
scaffold for another. If the thing should happen to
me, I admit I should be very much annoyed. But,
in relation to society as a whole, what is the little
blood that the executioner sheds? A drop of water
oozing out of a reservoir, a blighted acorn falling
, from an oak. The condemnation of an innocent
man by a judge is a consequence of our system of
justice, just as the fall of a carpenter from the top
of a house is a consequence of man having his shelter
under a roof. Of a thousand bottles a workman
makes, he breaks at least one. Of a thousand sen-
tences a judge passes, at least one is bound to be
unjust. It is an evil to be expected, and for which
there is no possible remedy except the total suppres-
sion of justice. What would you think of an old
woman picking over beans who kept all the rubbish
because she was afraid she might throw away one
good bean? Would not a judge be acting the same
way who acquitted ten guilty men for fear of con-
demning one innocent one?
"Moreover, the condemnation of an innocent man
is a rare thing. It marks an epoch in the annals of
justice. It is almost impossible that a fortuitous
concourse of circumstances should so unite against
a man as to overwhelm him with charges which he
cannot disprove. And even in such a case I main-
tain that there is in the attitude of an accused man,
A BREAKFAST IN PRISON 223
in his look, in his gesture, in the sound of his voice,
elements of evidence which cannot escape the judge.
Besides, the death of an innocent man is only an
individual misfortune, while the acquittal of a guilty
man is a public calamity. Crime listens at the doors
of your court-room. It knows what is going on
inside, it calculates the chances of safety which your
indulgence affords. It applauds you when, through
excess of caution, it sees you acquit a guilty man,
for it is crime itself that you acquit. Justice should
not be too severe, there is no doubt of that. But,
when it is too indulgent, it abdicates, it destroys
itself. Men predestined to crime will abandon them-
selves without fear to their instincts, and no longer
see in their dreams the sinister face of the execu-
tioner. No longer will the scaffold rise between them
and their victims. They will take your money if
they need it, and your life if it stands in their way.
You congratulate yourself, good soul that you are,
on having saved an innocent man from the axe, but
you have caused twenty to die by the dagger. So
you have a balance of nineteen murders against your
account.
"And now I come back to the prison. To inspire
wholesome terror, the prison must be a place of
misery and suffering. Yet, there are in France fif-
teen million men who are more miserable in their
houses than the prisoner behind the bars. 'Too
happy if he but knew his happiness,' says the poet.
That's all very well in an eclogue. The husband-
224 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
man is the mountain thistle. Not a ray of sunlight
that does not burn him, not a breath of the north
wind that does not bite him, not a downpour of rain
that does not drench him. He toils from the morn-
ing angelus till the evening angelus. He has an
old father, and he cannot soften the rigour of his
old age. He has a beautiful wife, and he can give
her nothing but rags. He has children, a hungry
brood, continually calling for bread, and often there
is not a crumb in the bin. The prisoner, on the other
hand, is warmly clad and sufficiently fed. He does
not have to earn his bread before he puts it in his
mouth. He laughs, he sings, he plays, he sleeps on
his straw as long as he likes, and yet he is the object
of public pity. Charitable persons organise socie-
ties to make his prison less uncomfortable, and they
do it so well that, instead of being a punishment,
imprisonment becomes a reward. Beautiful ladies
boil his pot and prepare his soup. They preach
morality to him with white bread and meat. Surely
this man will prefer the careless and gay captivity
of the prison to the pinching liberty of the fields or
the shop. The prison ought to be the hell of the
city. I should like to see it rise in the middle of the
public square, gloomy and robed in black like the
judge. Through its little grated windows it should
cast sinister looks at the passers-by. From within its
enclosures there should issue, not songs, but only
the sound of clanking chains or barking dogs. The
old man should be afraid to rest under its walls.
A BREAKFAST IN PRISON 225
The child should not dare to play within its shadow.
The belated burgher should turn out of his way and
shun it as be shuns the graveyard. Only in this
way will you obtain from the prison the result that
you expect from it."
My uncle might still have been discussing, had
not M. Minxit arrived to cut short his argument.
The worthy man was streaming with perspiration.
He gasped for breath like a porpoise stranded on
the beach, and was as red as the case in which my
uncle carried his surgical instruments.
"Benjamin," he cried, mopping his forehead, "I
have come to take you to breakfast with me."
"How so, Monsieur Minxit?" cried all the guests
together.
"Why, because Benjamin is free. That's the key
to the whole riddle. Here," he added, pulling a
paper from his pocket and handing it to Boutron,
"here is Bonteint's discharge."
"Bravo, Monsieur Minxit!"
And all rose, and, glass in hand, drank to M,
Minxit's health. Machecourt tried to get up but he
fell back on his chair. Joy almost deprived him of
his senses. Benjamin chanced to cast a glance at him.
"What, Machecourt," exclaimed Benjamin, whose
eyes happened to fall on him just then, "are you
mad? Drink to Minxit's health, or I'll bleed you on
the spot."
Machecourt rose mechanically, emptied his glass
at one swallow, and began to weep.
226 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
"My good Monsieur Minxit," continued Ben-
jamin, "may I—
"All right, all right!" said Minxit. "I get you.
You are making ready to thank me. Poor boy, never
mind. I herewith absolve you of the onus. It is
for my own good and not yours that I have taken
you out of here. You know very well I cannot get
along without you. You see, gentlemen, at the bot-
tom of all our actions, no matter how generous they
may seem, there is only egoism. It may not be a
pleasant maxim, but I can't help it, it's true."
"Monsieur Boutron," said Benjamin, "is Bon-
teint's discharge in proper legal form?"
"I see nothing the matter with it except a big
blot which the honest cloth dealer has doubtless
added by way of a flourish."
"In that case, gentlemen," said Benjamin, "permit
me to go to my dear sister to announce this good
news to her myself."
"I'll go with you," said Machecourt. "I want to
be a witness of her joy. Never since the day Gas-
pard came into the world have I been so happy."
"Permit me," said M. Minxit, sitting down to
table. "Monsieur Boutron, another plate! Well,
in retaliation, I herewith extend my invitation to you
for supper at Corvol this evening."
This proposition was received with acclamation
by all the guests. After breakfast they retired to
the coffee-room to await the hour of parting.
CHAPTER XVII
A TRIP TO CORVOL
THE waiter came to tell my uncle that there was
an old woman at the door who wanted to speak
to hrm.
"Tell her to come in," said Benjamin, "and give
her some refreshments."
"Yes," answered the waiter, "but you see the old
woman is not at all inviting. She is ragged, and
she is weeping tears as big as my little finger."
"She is weeping?" cried my uncle. "Why
didn't you tell me that at once, you scamp?"
And he hurried out of the room.
The old woman who had called for my uncle was
really shedding big tears, which she wiped away with
an old piece of red calico.
"What's the matter, my good woman?" said Ben-
jamin, in a tone of politeness that he did not use
toward everyone. "What can I do for you?"
"You must come to Sembert to see my sick son,"
said the old woman.
"Sembert? The village at the top of Monts-le-
Duc? Why, that's half way to heaven! All right,
I'll call to-morrow afternoon."
227
228 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
"If you don't come to-day," said the old woman,
"the priest will be there with his black cross to-
morrow. It may be too late already. My son has a
carbuncle."
"That's bad both for your son and for me. But
why don't you ask Doctor Arnout? That would be
best all around."
"I did ask him, but he knows we are poor and
that he will not be paid for his visits, and so he
doesn't want to disturb himself."
"What," said my uncle, "you have no money to
pay your doctor? That puts a different face on the
matter. Now I'm interested. All I'll ask you is to
give me time enough to empty a little glass I have
left on the table, then I'll go with you. By the way,
we'll need some Peruvian bark. Here is a little
coin. Go to Perier's and buy a few ounces. Tell
him I didn't have time to write a prescription."
A quarter of an hour later my uncle, with the old
woman at his side, was trudging up those unculti-
vated and savage slopes that begin the faubourg of
Bethleem and terminate in the broad plateau on top
of which is perched the hamlet of Sembert.
M. Minxit and his guests departed in a cart drawn
by four horses. All the inhabitants of the faubourg
of Beuvron turned out and stood at the doorways
with candles in their hand to see them pass. It was
indeed a more curious phenomenon than an eclipse.
Arthus was singing, "When the lights are lit,"
Guillerand, "Marlbrough has gone to war," and the
A TRIP TO CORVOL 229
poet Millot, whom they had fastened to one of the
cart-stakes because he didn't seem very steady, in-
toned his Christmas Hymn. M. Minxit prided him-
self on his magnificence. He gave his guests a mem-
orable supper, which is still being talked about at
Corvol. Unfortunately he was so prodigal with his
toasts that his guests were unable to raise their
glasses when they reached the second course.
Meanwhile Benjamin arrived. He was worn out
with fatigue and in a humour to kill everybody, for
his patient had died under his hands, and he had
fallen two times on the road. But no sorrow or
vexation could hold its own with Benjamin before a
white table-cloth adorned with bottles. So he sat
down to table as if nothing had happened.
"Your friends are milksops," said M. Minxit. "I
should have expected greater power of resistance
from sheriff's officers, manufacturers, and school-
teachers. I won't even have the satisfaction of offer-
ing them champagne. Why, look, Machecourt
doesn't recognise you, and Guillerand is holding out
his snuff-box instead of his glass to Arthus."
"What do you expect?" answered Benjamin.
"Not everybody has your strength, Monsieur
Minxit."
"Yes," replied the worthy man, flattered by the
compliment, "but what are we going to do with all
these chicken-hearted fellows? I haven't enough
beds for all of them, and they are in no condition to
go back tP Clamecy to-night,"
23o MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
"That needn't bother you any," said my uncle.
"Have some straw spread in your barn, and as fast
as they fall asleep, have them carried out there. To
keep them from catching cold put the big straw mat
over them which you use to protect the bed of
radishes from the frost."
"You are right," said M. Minxit.
He sent for two musicians, put them under the
command of the sergeant, and the plan proposed by
my uncle was carried out to the letter. Millot soon
dropped off to sleep, and the sergeant swung him
over his shoulder and carried him off as if he were a
clock-case. The transportation of Rapin, Parlanta,
and the others presented no serious difficulties. But
when it came to Arthus he proved to be so heavy
that they had to let him sleep where he was. As
for my uncle, he emptied his last bumper of cham-
pagne, said good-night and retired to the barn in his
turn.
The next morning, when M. Minxit's guests arose,
they looked like sugar-loaves just taken out of their
cases, and all the domestics of the house had to
be put to work to remove the straw from their
clothes. After breakfasting off the second course
which they had left untouched the night before,
they started off at a brisk trot with their four
horses.
They would have reached Clamecy very happily,
but for a little accident that happened on the way.
The horses, overexcited by the whip, upset the cart
A TRIP TO CORVOL 231
into one of the many dirty holes that dotted the road
at that time, and they all fell pell-mell into the mud.
The poet Millot, hapless as ever, found himself lying
with Arthus on top of him.
Fortunately for his coat, Benjamin had remained
at Corvol. That day M. Minxit entertained at din-
ner all the celebrities of the neighbourhood, two
noblemen among others. One of these illustrious
guests was M. de Pont-Casse, a red musketeer. The
other was a musketeer of the same colour, a friend
of M. de Pont-Casse, whom he had invited to spend
a few weeks with him in the remains of his castle.
Now, M. de Pont-Casse, into whose confidence we
have already taken our readers, would not have
been indisposed to repair the damages of his decayed
fortune with M. Minxit's. So he made a diligent
pursuit of Arabella, whom he had his eye on,
although he often told his friends that she was an
insect hatched in urine. Arabella had allowed her-'
self to be taken in by his exaggeratedly fine manners.
She thought him far handsomer with his faded
plumes and far more amiable with his court frip-
pery than my uncle with his unpretentious wit and
his red coat. But M. Minxit, who was a man not
only of wit, but of common sense, did not share
this opinion at all. Though M. de Pont-Casse had
been a colonel, he would not let him have his daugh-
ter. He had made Benjamin stay for dinner to give
Arabella an opportunity to compare her two adorers,
which, in his opinion, could not result to the mus-
232 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
keteer's advantage, and also because he felt confi-
dent that my uncle would succeed in removing the
tinsel of the two noblemen and mortifying their
pride.
While waiting for dinner, Benjamin went to take
a walk in the village. As he left M. Minxit's house,
he saw a pair of officers walking in the middle of
the street. They looked as*though they would not
have turned out of their way for a mail-coach, and
the peasants stared at them in amazement. My uncle
was not a man to pay any attention to so small 'a
matter. But as he passed them, he heard one of
them say very distinctly to his companion, "Say,
that is the queer chap who wants to marry Made-
moiselle Minxit." My uncle's first impulse was to
ask them why they thought him so queer. But he
reflected that it would be scarcely becoming to make
a spectacle of himself before the inhabitants of
Corvol, though he generally cared very little for
the proprieties. So he acted as if he had heard
nothing, and walked into the house of his friend, the
notary.
"I have just met two creatures in the street," he
said, "who looked like lobsters with feathers on
them. They almost insulted me. Can you tell me
to what family of the Crustacea these queer fellows
belong?"
"Oh, the devil!" said the notary, somewhat
frightened. "Don't try your jokes on those men.
One of them, M. de Pont-Casse, is the most dan-
A TRIP TO CORVOL 233
gerous duellist of our age, and not one of the many
who have taken the duelling-ground against him has
returned from it whole."
"We shall see," said my uncle.
When the village clock struck two, he took his
friend, the notary, by the arm, and went back with
him to M. Minxit's. The company was already
gathered in the parlour, and they were only waiting
for them to sit down at table.
The two country squires, who acted in the pres-
ence of these rustics as though they were in a con-
quered country, monopolised the conversation from
the start. M. de Pont-Casse incessantly kept twirl-
ing his moustache, and talking of the court, of his
duels, and of his amorous exploits. Arabella, who
had never heard such magnificent things, was very
much taken with his conversation. My uncle noticed
it, but, as Mademoiselle Minxit was indifferent to
him, he thought it none of his concern. M. de
Pont-Casse, piqued at his failure to produce an effect
upon Benjamin, addressed some remarks to him that
bordered on insolence. But my uncle, sure of his
strength, disdained to pay any attention to them,
and occupied himself exclusively with his glass and
his plate. M. Minxit was scandalised by the non-
chalant voracity of his champion.
"Don't you understand what M. de Pont-Casse
means?" cried the good man. "What are you think-
ing of, Benjamin?"
"Of the dinner, Monsieur Minxit. And I advise
234 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
you to do the same. Isn't that what you invited
us for?"
M. de Pont-Casse had too much pride to believe
that he could be ignored. He took my uncle's
silence for a confession of his inferiority and began
a more direct attack.
"I have heard you called de Rathery," he said to
Benjamin. "I used to know, or rather I have seen
— for one does not make the acquaintance of such
people — a Rathery among the king's hostlers. Was
he a relative of yours, perhaps?" x
My uncle pricked up his ears like a horse struck
with a whip.
"M. de Pont-Casse," he answered, "the Ratherys
have never made themselves court servants in any
livery whatsoever. The Ratherys have proud souls,
Monsieur. They will eat no bread except what they
have earned. And it is they who, with a few mil-
lions of others, pay the wages of those flunkeys of
all colours who go under the name of cour-
tiers."
There was a solemn silence in the company, and
everyone gave my uncle an approving look.
"Monsieur Minxit," he added, "may I have an-
other piece of that hare-pie? It is excellent. I
wager* that the hare of which it is made was not a
nobleman."
"Monsieur," said M. de Pont-Casse's friend,
assuming a martial attitude, "what did you mean
by that remark about a hare?"
A TRIP TO CORVOL 235
"I meant that a nobleman would not be any good
in a pie, that's all," answered my uncle coldly,
"Gentlemen," said M, Minxit, "it U understood
of course that your discussions are not to overstep
the limits of pleasantry."
"Of course," said M. de Pont-Cassi "Strictly
speaking, the remarks of M. de Rathery are such as,
to constitute an offence to two officers of the king,
who have not the honour to be of the plebeian class
like himself. From his red coat and his big sword,
I at first took him for one of ours, and I still tremble,
like the man who came near taking a serpent for an
eel, when I think that I came near fraternising with
him. It was only tlje long queue dangling over his
shoulders that undeceived me."
"Monsieur de Pont-Casse," cried M. Minxit, "I
will not allow "
"Let him alone, my good Monsieur Minxit," said
my uncle. "Insolence is the weapon of those who
cannot handle the flexible rod of wit. I know that
I have no occasion to reproach myself for my con-
duct toward M. de Pont-Casse, for I have not yet
paid any attention to him."
"Good," said M. Minxit.
The musketeer, who prided himself on being a
very witty fellow, did not become discouraged. He
knew that in the combats of wit as well as in those
of the sword fortune is fickle.
"Monsieur Rathery," he continued, "Monsieur
surgeon Rathery, do you know that there is a closer
236 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
analogy between our two professions than you think?
I would bet my sorrel horse against your red coat
that you have killed more people this year than I
did in my last campaign."
"You would win, Monsieur de Pont-Casse," re-
plied my uncle coolly. "I have had the misfortune to
lose a patient this year. He died of a carbuncle
yesterday."
"Bravo, Benjamin! Hurrah for the people!"
cried M. Minxit, unable any longer to restrain his
joy. "You see, my nobleman, the people of wit are
not all in court."
"You are the best proof of that, Monsieur
Minxit," answered the musketeer, disguising the
mortification at his defeat under a serene counte-
nance.
Meantime, all the guests, except the two noble-
men, held out their glasses and clinked them cor-
dially with Benjamin's.
"To the health of Benjamin Rathery, the avenger
of the people, the misunderstood and the insulted!"
cried M. Minxit.
The dinner lasted far into the evening. My
uncle noticed that Mademoiselle Minxit had disap-
peared soon after the departure of M. de Pont-
Casse. But he was too much preoccupied with the
praises showered upon him to pay any attention to
his fiancee. About ten o'clock he took leave of M.
Minxit. He escorted him to the end of the village,
and made him promise that the marriage should
A TRIP TO CORVOL 237
take place within a week. As Benjamin approached
a point opposite the Trucy mill, a sound of conver-
sation reached his ears, and he thought he could
distinguish the voices of Arabella and her illustrious
adorer.
Out of regard for Mademoiselle Minxit, Benja-
min did not wish to surprise her on a country road
with a musketeer at that hour of the night. He hid
himself under the branches of a large walnut-tree,
and waited for the two lovers to pass on before con-
tinuing on his way. He had no desire whatever to
steal Arabella's little secrets, but the wind brought
them to him, and he had to overhear them in spite
of himself.
"I know a way of making him pack off," said M.
de Pont-Casse. "I will send him a challenge."
"I know him," answered Arabella. "He is a man
of ungovernable pride, and even if he were sure of
being killed on the spot, he would accept."
"So much the better. Then I'll rid you of him
forever."
"Yes. But in the first place I don't want to be
an accomplice in a murder, and secondly my father
loves that man perhaps more than he loves me, his
only daughter. I will never consent to your killing
my father's best friend."
"You are charming with your scruples, Arabella.
I have killed more than one for a word that sounded
bad in my ears, and this plebeian, with his savage
wit, has taken a cruel revenge on me. I should not
238 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
like everybody at court to know what was said to-
night at your father's table. But to comply with
your wishes, I will content myself with crippling him.
If I should cut the cord of his kneepan, for instance,
you would have sufficient excuse to refuse him your
hand."
"But suppose you should fall yourself, Hector?"
said Mademoiselle Minxit in her tenderest voice.
"I who have sent to Hades the best swordsmen
of the army — the brave Bellerive, the terrible
Desrivieres, the formidable Chateaufort — I fall by
a surgeon's rapier! You insult me by entertaining
such a doubt, my beautiful Arabella. I am as sure
of my sword as you of your needles. Don't you
know that? Tell me the place where you would
like me to strike him, and I will be delighted to
serve you."
The voices were lost in the distance. My uncle
left his hiding-place, and calmly resumed his journey
to Clamecy, revolving over in his mind the course
he should pursue.
CHAPTER XVIII
WHAT MY UNCLE SAID TO HIMSELF REGARDING
DUELLING
"M. DE PONT-CASSE wants to cripple me. He
promised Mademoiselle Minxit that he would, and a
valiant officer of the Guards is not the man to break
his word.
"Let me think what I am to do in the circum-
stances. Shall I let myself be crippled by M. de
Pont-Casse with the docility of a dog under the
scalpel, or shall I decline the honour he graciously
intends to bestow upon me? It is to M. de Pont-
Casse's interest that I should go upon crutches. I
know it is, but I don't exactly see why I should do
him that favour. Mademoiselle Minxit makes very
little difference to me even though she is equipped
with a dowry of one hundred thousand francs. But I
care very much for the symmetry of my figure, and
without flattery to myself I am good-looking enough
for this concern of mine not to seem ridiculous. You
say a man challenged to a duel must fight. But
please tell me, in what code of laws do you find it
written? In the Pandects, in Charlemagne's Capitu-
laries, in the ten commandments, or in the canons
239
240 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
of the Church? And in the first place, M. de Pont-
Casse, are you and I an even match? Yoit are a
musketeer and I am a doctor. You are an artist in
fencing, and I scarcely know how to handle any-
thing but the bistoury or the lancet. You feel no
more scruple, it seems, in depriving a man of a limb
than in tearing off a fly's wing, while I have a horror
of blood, especially arterial blood. Wouldn't it be
as ridiculous for me to accept your challenge as if
I were to try to walk a tight rope upon the challenge
of an acrobat, or try to swim across an arm of the
sea upon the challenge of a swimming teacher? And
even though the chances between us were equal, one
reckons on something to be gained in such affairs.
Now, if I kill you, what shall I gain? And if I am
killed by you, then what shall I gain? You see, in
either case it would be a bad bargain for me. But,
you repeat, where a man is challenged to a duel he
must fight. What, if a highwayman stops me at the
edge of a wood, I have no hesitation in making my
escape with the aid of my good legs; but when a
drawing-room murderer sticks a challenge under my
nose, must I feel myself in duty bound to throw
myself upon the point 9f his sword?
"When an individual whose acquaintance you have
made from having accidentally stepped on his toe,
writes: 'Monsieur, be present at such and such an
hour, at such and such a spot, so that I may have the
satisfaction of killing you to atone for the insult you
offered me,' one must, in your opinion, submit to his
UNCLE'S SOLILOQUY ON DUELLING 241
orders, and also take good care not to keep him
waiting. Strange! There are men who would not
risk a thousand francs to save their friend's honour
or their father's life, who yet risk their own life in a
duel on account of an ambiguous word or a side
glance. But what is life? Isn't it the one blessing
without which all others are of little consequence?
Or is it a rag to be thrown to the passing rag-picker,
or a worn coin to be tossed to the blind man singing
beneath your window? They ask me to stake my
life in a game of swords with M. de Pont-Casse,
whereas, if I should stake a hundred francs in a game
of cards with him, my reputation would be ruined
and the poorest cobbler would not have me for a
son-in-law. Then, according to their views, am I to
be more prodigal of my life than of my money ? And
must I, who pride myself on being a philosopher,
regulate my convictions according to those of such
casuists?
"As a matter of fact, who constitutes this public
which takes it upon itself to judge our actions? Gro-
cers who use false scales, cloth merchants who give
false measure, tailors who make dresses for their
children out of their customers' goods, men of prop-
erty who live by usury, mothers of families who have
lovers; in short, a heap of crickets and grasshop-
pers who know not what they sing, simpletons who
say yes and no without knowing why, a tribunal of
blockheads incapable of giving reasons for their
decisions. It would be a fine thing in me if I, a
24?- MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
doctor, should send a patient suffering with hydro-
phobia to Ardennes to kneel at the shrine of St.
Hubert because those fools believe the great saint
can cure the rabies. And then observe those who
pride themselves on being the wisest, and you will
see how illogical they are. The philosophers wax
indignant over the poor wives in India who" throw
themselves alive, decked in all their finery, on their
husbands' funeral-piles. And when two men cut each
other's throats for a mere nothing, they glorify them
for their bravery.
"You say I am a coward when I have the good
sense to decline a challenge. But what do you take
cowardice to be? If cowardice means avoiding
needless danger, where will you find a courageous
man? Who of you remains calmly dreaming in bed
when the roof is in flames over your head? Who
does not call the doctor in when he is seriously ill?
Who does not clutch at the bushes on the banks
when he falls into the river? Once more, what is
the public? A coward preaching bravery to others.
Suppose M. de Pont-Casse were to challenge, not
me, Benjamin Rathery, but the public to fight a duel,
how many in the crowd would have the courage to
accept?
"Besides, has a philosopher any other public to
consider than men of thought and superior intelli-
gence? And don't men of intelligence consider the
duel the most absurd, the most barbarous of preju-
dices? What does the logic learned in the duelling
UNCLE'S SOLILOQUY ON DUELLING 243
academy prove? A well-delivered sword thrust is a
magnificent argument, is it not? Parry tierce, parry
quarte — now you can demonstrate anything you like.
A great pity that when the pope declared that the
revolution of the earth was a heretical doctrine,
Galileo did not think of challenging His Holiness to
a duel to prove the truth of his discovery.
"In the Middle Ages there was at least a genuine
reason for duelling. It sprang from the religious
beliefs. Our grandparents thought God too just to
allow an innocent man to fall under the blows of a
guilty man, and the issue of the combat was regarded
as a decree from on high. But how can we, who,
thank Heaven, have recovered from those absurd
ideas, justify the duel? And what purpose can it
serve now?
"You dread the charge of cowardice if you de-
cline a challenge. But how about those wretches
who make murder a profession and challenge you
because they feel sure of killing you? What of
their courage? How courageous is the butcher who
kills a sheep with its feet bound, or the huntsman
who fires at a hare in the warren or at a bird singing
on the branch? I have known many of these people
to be too timid to have a tooth pulled. And how
many of them would dare to stand up against the
will of the man upon whom they are dependent to
satisfy their consciences? I can understand why the
cannibalistic Southsea Islander kills men of his own
colour. He roasts them nice and brown and eats
244 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
them. But you, friend duellist, with what sauce
will you eat the body of the man you challenge after
you have killed him? You are guiltier than the mur-
derer sentenced to death by hanging. He at least
was driven to murder by poverty. In doing what
he did he may have been moved by a sentiment
praiseworthy in itself but deplorable in its conse-
quences. But you — what motive puts the sword in
your hand? Is it vanity, or an appetite for-blood, or
curiosity to see how a man writhes in the death-
agony? Can't you picture to yourself the wife
throwing herself half-crazed with grief on her hus-
band's body, the orphaned children crying in the
house draped with black, the mother praying God
to take her instead of her son in the coffin? Yet it
is you who have acted like a tiger and caused all that
misery! You want to kill us if we don't recognise
you as a man of honour ! But you are not worthy
of the name of man. You are a brute thirsting for
blood, a viper stinging for the mere pleasure of use-
less killing. And even the viper does not attack
creatures of its own kind. When your adversary
has fallen, you kneel in the blood-stained mud, you
try to staunch the wounds you made, you act as if
you were his best friend. Then why did you kill
him, wretch? What good are your pangs of con-
science? Will your tears replace the blood that you
have shed? You, fashionable assassin, correct mur-
derer, you find men to shake hands with you, mothers
of families to invite you to their parties. Women
UNCLE'S SOLILOQUY ON DUELLING 245
who faint at the sight of the executioner arc ready
to press their lips to yours and let your head rest on
their bosom. But these men and women, to be sure,
judge things only by their names. If a man is killed
by what is called murder, they are horrified. If he
is killed by what is called a duel, they applaud.
After all, how much time have you in which to enjoy
this applause? Up on high 'Murderer' is inscribed
after your name. On your brow is a blood-stain
which all the kisses of your mistresses will not re-
move. No judge on earth has sentenced you ; but up
in heaven there is a judge awaiting you who will not
be fooled by talk of honour. I for my part am a
doctor, not to kill, but to cure, do you hear, M. de
Pont-Casse? If you have too much blood in your
veins, I can rid you of some, but only with the point
of my lancet."
Thus my uncle reasoned with himself. We shall
soon see how he put his doctrines into practice.
Night does not always bring good counsel. My
uncle rose the next day determined not to yield to
M. de Pont-Casse's provocation, and to end the ad-
venture as soon as possible, he started for Corvol
that very day. Perhaps he had not breakfasted, or
did not perspire freely enough, or was suffering
from indigestion of the day before. However that
might be, he felt an unusual melancholy creeping
over him in spite of himself. In a very pensive mood,
like Racine's Hippolyte, he mounted the terraced
slopes of the mountain of Beaumont. His noble
246 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
sword, which generally hung so straight at his side,
its point threatening the ground, now drooped
mournfully, as if sharing its master's thoughts. His
three-cornered hat, which usually sat so proudly on
his head, tilted a bit to the left, now hung anxiously
on his neck, as if in a melancholy mood, and his
bright eyes were dimmed. It moved him to look
down on the valley of the Beuvron, stretching away
stiff and shivering at his feet, at those large walnut
trees in mourning which looked like huge polyps, at
those tall poplars with but a few red leaves on them
left, at the flocks of ravens sometimes fluttering
about their tops, at that wild copse browned by the
frost, at the dark stream that flowed toward the
mill-wheels between banks of snow; at the round
tower of La Postaillerie, grey and misty as though
a column made of clouds, at the old feudal castle of
Pressure, which seemed to crouch among the brown
reeds of its moats like a creature in a fever, at the
village chimneys with the thin light smoke, like a
man's breath when he blows on his fingers, curling
up from them. The tic-tac of the mill, that friend
with which he had conversed so often on his way
back from Corvol in the fine moonlight nights of
autumn, had a sinister sound. It seemed to jerk
out:
"Carrying your sword, my brave,
You are walking to your grave."
To which my uncle replred :
UNCLE'S SOLILOQUY ON DUELLING 247
"You babbler, for God's sake, be still I
I do whatever is my will.
And if I die before my turn,
It's no one else's damn concern."
There was something sickly about the weather.
Huge white clouds, driven by the north wind, crept
clumsily across the sky, like a wounded swan. The
snow was as grey as the day, and the horizon was
girdled in by a line of fog hanging on the mountains.
My uncle felt that he never again would see that
landscape, now in its winter shroud, lighted up by
the gay spring sunshine or festooned with flowers.
M. Minxit was absent when my uncle arrived at
Corvol. He entered the drawing-room, where he
found M. de Pont-Casse seated upon a sofa beside
Arabella. Without paying any attention to his be-
trothed's pouting or to the musketeer's provocative
manner, Benjamin threw himself into an arm-chair,
crossed his legs, and laid his hat on a chair, like a
man in no hurry to go. After talking for a while of
M. Minxit's health, the probabilities of a thaw, and
the grippe, Arabella turned silent, and my uncle
could get nothing out of her beyond a few sharp,
shrill monosyllables, like the notes that a learner
elicits from his clarinette with difficulty and at rare
intervals. M. de Pont-Casse walked up and down
the drawing-room, twirling ""his moustache, his big
spurs clanking on the wooden floor, apparently
pondering how to pick a quarrel with my uncle.
Benjamin divined his intentions, but pretended
24$ MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
not to notice him, and picked up a book lying on
a sofa. At first he contented himself with turn-
ing over the leaves, watching M. de Pont-Casse
out of the corner of his eye; but as it was a
medical work, he soon became absorbed in its inter-
esting contents and forgot the musketeer. M. de
Pont-Casse, however, decided to bring things to a
crisis. He halted before my uncle, and said, sur-
veying him from head to foot :
"Do you know, Monsieur, you pay very long
visits here?"
"It seems to me," answered my uncle, "that you
came before I did."
"And also very frequent," added the musketeer.
"I assure you, Monsieur," replied my uncle, "they
would be much less frequent if I expected to find
you here each time."
"If you come here on Mademoiselle Minxit's ac-
count," continued the musketeer, "she begs you
through me to rid her of your long person."
"If Mademoiselle Minxit, who is not a musketeer,
had any orders to give me, she would give them
more politely. At any rate, Monsieur, you will allow
me to wait before retiring until she has spoken to me
herself and until I have interviewed M. Minxit."
And my uncle went on with his reading.
The officer took several more turns in the draw-
ing-room, then stood himself opposite my uncle and
said:
"I pray you, Monsieur, kindly interrupt your
UNCLE'S SOLILOQUY ON DUELLING 249
reading a moment, I have a word to say to
you."
"Since it is only one word," said my uncle, turning
down the page he was reading, "I can spend a mo-
ment listening to you."
M. de Pont-Casse was infuriated by Benjamin's
coolness.
"Monsieur Rathery," said he, "if you do not leave
this instant by the door, I will put you out through
the window."
"Really ! Well, I, Monsieur, shall be politer than
you. I shall put you out by the door."
And taking the officer by the waist, Benjamin car-
ried him to the head of the steps and locked the door
behind him.
Mademoiselle Minxit sat there trembling, and my
uncle said:
"Do not be too much afraid of me. I was justified
in treating that man that way. He has insulted me
repeatedly. Besides," he added, bitterly, "I shall
not embarrass you long with my long person. I am
not one of those dowry-hunters who take a woman
from the arms of the man she loves and keep her
fastened to their bedstead. Heaven has granted
every young girl her share of love. She has the
right to choose the man upon whom she wishes to
bestow it. No one has the right to pour the white
pearls of her youth into the street and trample them
under foot. God forbid thnt low oreed for money
should lead me to do anything bad. So far I have
250 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
been a poor man. I know the joys of poverty, and I
am ignorant of the miseries of wealth. Probably I
should be making a bad bargain if I exchanged my
wild jolly indigence for ill-tempered opulence. At
any rate, I should not like a woman who detested
me to bring me opulence. I beg you to tell me in all
sincerity whether you love M. de Pont-Casse. I
must have your reply in order to determine my con-
duct toward you and your father."
Mademoiselle Minxit was moved.
"Had I known you before M. de Pont-Casse, per-
haps you would be the one I love."
"Mademoiselle," interrupted my uncle, "it is not
politeness, but sincerity that I ask of you. Tell me
frankly, do you think you would be happier with
M. de Pont-Casse than with me?"
"What shall I say, Monsieur Rathery?" answered
Arabella. "A woman is not always happy with the
man she loves, but she is always unhappy with the
man she does not love."
"I thank you, Mademoiselle. Now I know what
I have to do. Will you kindly order some lunch
for me? The stomach is an egoist with little sym-
pathy for the tribulations of the heart."
My uncle ate as Alexander or Caesar might
have eaten on the eve of battle. He did not
want to await M. Minxit's return. He had not
the courage to face his mournful look when he
should learn that he, Benjamin, whom he treated
almost as a son, declined to be his son-in-law. He
UNCLE'S SOLILOQUY ON DUELLING 251
preferred to inform him of his heroic determination
by letter.
At some distance from the town he saw M. de
Pont-Casse's friend walking up and down the road
majestically. The musketeer advanced to meet him,
and said:
"Monsieur, you keep those who demand repara-
tion of you waiting a very long time."
"I was having lunch," answered my uncle.
"In behalf of M. de Pont-Casse, I have to hand
you a letter to which he has charged me to bring back
a reply."
"Let us see what the worthy nobleman has to say
to me. 'Monsieur, in view of the enormity of the
outrage you inflicted upon me' — What outrage? I
carried him from the drawing-room to the steps. I
wish some one would outrage me the same way by
carrying me to Clamecy — 'I consent to cross swords
with you.' — The great soul! He condescends to
grant me the favour of being crippled by him! If
that is not magnanimity, then I don't know what
magnanimity is ! — 'I hope you will show yourself
worthy of the honoui I do you by accepting.' — Why,
of course ! It would be base ingratitude on my part
to refuse. You may say to your friend that if he
kills me like the brave Desrivieres, the intrepid
Btllerive, etc., 1 wish them to inscribe my tombstone
in letters of gold with, 'Here lies Benjamin Rathery,
killed in a duel by a nobleman.' — 'Postscript.' —
Just see, your friend's note has a postscript. — 'I
252 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
will await you to-morrow at ten o'clock in the morn-
ing at the place known as Chaume-des-Fertiaux.'—-
At the place known as Chaume-des-Fertiaux. Upon
my honour, a process-server could not have drawn
it up better. But Chaume-des-Fertiaux is a good
league from Clamecy. I, who have no sorrel horse,
haven't got the time to go so far to fight. If your
friend will condescend to meet me at the place known
as Croix-des-Michelins, I shall have the honour to
await him there."
"And where is this Croix-des-Michelins?"
"On the Corvol road, beyond the faubourg of
Beuvron. Your friend must be a sour sort of person
if he does not like the spot. From there you get a
view for a king to enjoy. In the foreground are the
hills of Sembert with their terraces loaded with vines,
their big bald pates and the forest of Frace on their
necks. At' another season of the year the view would
be still finer, but unfortunately I cannot revive
springtime with a breath. At the foot of the hills
lies the town, with its thousand curls of smoke,
pressed between the two rivers and climbing the
steep slopes of Crot-Pin^on like a hunted man. If
your friend has any talent for drawing, he can adorn
his album with a picture of this view. From up
between the great gables, that in their moss cover-
ings look like pieces of crimson velvet, rises the
tower of Saint Martin, turreted and decorated with
its stone jewels. The tower in itself is worth a
cathedral. Alongside extends the old basilica, with
UNCLE'S SOLILOQUY ON DUELLING 253
great bold arched counter-forts on the right and the
left. Your friend will instinctively compare it to a
gigantic spider. Toward the south run the bluish
mountains of Morvan, like a succession of sombre
clouds. Then "
"Oh, enough of your joking, please! I did not
come here to have you show me a magic lantern.
To-morrow, then, at Croix-des-Michelins."
"To-morrow? One moment, the affair is not so
pressing that it cannot be postponed. To-morrow I
am going to Dornecy to taste a cask of old wine that
Page is thinking of buying. He relies on my judg-
ment as to quality and price, and you must realise
that for your friend's sake I cannot fail in the duties
of friendship. Day after to-morrow I am invited to
lunch in town. I cannot, in decency, give the pref-
erence to a duel. Thursday I am to tap a patient of
mine who has the dropsy. As your friend wishes to
cripple me, it would be impossible for me to per-
form the operation afterward, and Doctor Arnout
would make a bad job of it. For Friday — oh, yes,
Friday's a fast day. I believe I have no engagement
for Friday, and I know of nothing to prevent me
from being at your friend's disposal."
"We are obliged to comply with your desires; at
least, you will do me the favour to bring a second
with you, in order to save me from playing the tire-
some role of spectator."
"Why not? I know you are friends, you and
M. de Pont-Casse, and I should be sorry to sepa-
254 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
rate you. I will bring my barber, if he has time
and if it suits you."
"Insolent fellow!" said the musketeer.
"This barber," answered my uncle, "is not a man
to be despised. He has a rapier long enough to spit
four musketeers upon. Besides, if you prefer, I will
willingly take his place."
"I take note of your words," said the musketeer.
My uncle, as soon as he rose the next day, went
in search of Machecourt's inkstand, and began to
indite a magnificent epistle to M. Minxit in his finest
style and best penmanship, explaining why he could
not become his son-in-law. My grandfather, who
was given the privilege of reading it, told me it
would have made a jailer weep. If the exclamation
point had not then existed, my uncle would certainly
have invented it. The letter had been in the post-
office scarcely a quarter of an hour, when M. Minxit
arrived at my grandmother's in person, accompa-
nied by the sergeant, who was himself accompanied
by two masks, two foils, and his honourable poodle.
Benjamin was just then breakfasting with Mache-
court off a herring and the patrimonial white wine of
Choulot.
"Welcome, Monsieur Minxit!" cried Benjamin.
"Wouldn't you like a bit of this fish?"
"Do you take me for a thrasher?"
"And you, sergeant?"
"I have given up such things since I had the honour
to join the band."
UNCLE'S SOLILOQUY ON DUELLING 255
"But your dog, what would he think of this
head?"
"I thank you for him, but I believe he doesn't
care for sea-fish."
"I admit a herring is not as good as pike boiled
in "
"And how about carp, especially carp cooked with
Burgundy wine?" interrupted M. Minxit.
"To be sure, to be sure," said Benjamin. "Or
hare that you yourself have prepared. However,
herring is excellent when you haven't anything else.
By the way, I mailed a letter to you a quarter of an
hour ago. You probably have not received it yet,
Monsieur Minxit?"
"No," said M. Minxit, "but I come to bring you
the answer. You say Arabella does not love you,
and for that reason you will not marry her."
"M. Rathery is right," said the sergeant. "I had
a bed-fellow who couldn't bear me. And I couldn't
bear him. Our household was a regular police-sta-
tion. When one of us wanted turnips in the soup,
the other one put carrots in. At the canteen, if I
asked for currant wine, he sent for gin. We quar-
relled over the best place to keep our guns in. If he
had a kick to give, it was my poodle that was sure
to get it, and if a flea bit him, he insisted it came
from poor Azor. Just think, we once fought in
the moonlight because he wanted to sleep on the
right side of the bed, and I insisted on his taking
the left side. The only thing I could do to get
256 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
rid of him was to send him to the hospital.''
"You did quite right, sergeant," said my uncle.
"When people do not know how to live in this world,
we sentence them to the other forever."
"There is some truth in what the sergeant says,"
said M. Minxit. "To be loved is more than to be
rich. It means happiness. Consequently, I do not
disapprove of your scruples, my dear Benjamin. All
I ask of you is that you continue to come to Corvol,
as you have been doing. Your not wanting to be
my son-in-law is no reason for ceasing to be my
friend. You need no longer pay Arabella pretty
compliments, fetch water for sprinkling her flowers,
wax enthusiastic over the ruffles she embroiders for
me and over the superiority of her cream-cheeses.
We will breakfast together, dine together, philoso-
phise together, laugh together. That's the best
pastime conceivable. You are fond of truffles. My
pantry shall always smell of them. You have a
fondness for volnay — a fondness I do not share-
but I shall always have some in my wine-cellar. If
you feel like going hunting, I will buy you a double-
barrelled gun and a brace of hounds. And inside of
three months, I am convinced, Arabella will be sick
of her nobleman and head over heels in love with
you. Does the arrangement suit you? Yes or no.
You know I am not fond of fine phrases."
"Well, yes, Monsieur Minxit," said my uncle.
"Very well, I expected nothing less from your
friendship. And now are you going to fight a duel?"
UNCLE'S SOLILOQUY ON DUELLING 257
"Who the devil told you that?" cried my uncle.
"I know that urines hide nothing from you. Have
you examined my urine, without my knowledge?"
"Enough of your poor jokes. You are to fight
M. de Pont-Casse. You are to meet him three days
from now at Croix-des-Michelins, and in case you
rid me of M. de Pont-Casse, the other musketeer
will take his place. You see I am well informed."
"What, Benjamin!" cried Machecourt, his face as
pale as his plate.
"What, you wicked creature," my grandmother
also put in, "you are to fight a duel?"
"Listen to me, Machecourt, and you, my dear
sister, and you too, Monsieur Minxit. Yes, I am
going to fight a duel with M. de Pont-Casse. My
mind is made up. So save yourself remonstrances.
They would only bore me without making me change
my mind."
"I have not come," answered M. Minxit, "to try
to prevent the duel. On the contrary, I have come
to show you a way to victory, and, what is more,
to make your name famous throughout the coun-
try. The sergeant knows a superb thrust. In one
hour he could disarm the entire guild of fencing-
masters. As soon as he has drunk a glass of
white wine, he shall give you your first lesson. I
will leave him with you until Friday, and will stay
here myself to watch you and keep you from wasting
your time in the taverns."
"But what am I to do with your thrust," asked my
258 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
uncle. "Besides, if it is infallible, what glory would
there be in my triumphing over the vicomte? In
rendering Achilles invulnerable, Homer deprived
him of all the merit of his valour. I have thought
the matter over. I don't mean to use the sword at
all."
"What! You don't mean to fight with a pistol,
you fool you! If M. Arthus were your opponent,
very well. He is as big as a wardrobe."
"I don't mean to fight either with a pistol or a
sword. I wish to serve these bullies with a duel of
my own kind. You'll see, but I want to surprise
you."
"Very well, but learn my thrust all the same. It
is a weapon that won't be a nuisance to you, and
one never knows what one may need."
My uncle's room was in the second story, over
Machecourt's. After breakfast, he shut himself up
in it with the sergeant and M. Minxit to begin his
fencing-lessons. But the lesson was not of long
duration. At Benjamin's first attack Machecourt's
worm-eaten floor gave way under his feet, and he
went through up to his arm-pits.
The sergeant, amazed at the sudden disappear-
ance of his pupil, remained standing with his left
arm gently curved on a level with his ear and his
right arm extended in the attitude of a man about to
make a thrust. As for M. Minxit, he was seized
with such a desire to laugh that he came near suffo-
cating.
UNCLE'S SOLILOQUY ON DUELLING 259
"Where is Rathery?" he cried. "What has be-
come of Rathery? Sergeant, what have you done
with Rathery?"
"I see M. Rathery's head," answered the ser-
geant, "but the devil take me if I know where his
legs are."
Gaspard happened at that moment to be alone in
his father's room. At first he was somewhat aston-
ished at the abrupt arrival of his uncle's legs. Then
he burst out into wild shouts of laughter, which
mingled with M. Minxit's.
"Hello, there, Gaspard," cried Benjamin, who
heard him.
"Hello, there, my dear uncle," answered Gaspard.
"Please place your father's leather arm-chair un-
der my feet, Gaspard."
"I have no right to," replied the little rogue. "My
mother won't allow anybody to stand on it."
"Will you bring me that arm-chair, you damned
choir-boy, you!"
"Take off your shoes, and I will bring it to you."
"How do you expect me to take off my shoes?
My feet are in the first story, and my hands are in the
second."
"Well, give me a franc to pay me for my trouble."
"I will give you a franc and a half, my good
Gaspard, but the arm-chair at once, I beg of you.
My arms will soon separate from my shoulders."
"Credit is dead," said Gaspard. "Give me the
franc and a half at once. Otherwise, no arm-chair."
260 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
Fortunately Machecourt came in at that point.
He gave Gaspard a kick, and put an end to his
brother-in-law's suspension. Benjamin went to fin-
ish his fencing-lesson at Page's, and he proved so
apt a pupil that in two hours' time he was as skilful
as his teacher.
CHAPTER XIX
HOW MY UNCLE THRICE DISARMED M. DE PONT-CASSE
THE dawn, a dismal February dawn, had scarcely
thrown its leaden tints on the walls of his room,
when my uncle was up. He dressed himself grop-
ing about for his things, and softly descended the
stairs, particularly fearful of waking his sister. But
just as he reached the vestibule, he felt a woman's
hand on his shoulder.
"What, dear sister," he cried, just a bit scared,
"awake already?"
"Say rather not asleep yet, Benjamin. I wanted
to say good-bye to you before you go, perhaps the
last good-bye, Benjamin. Have you a conception of
how I am suffering at the thought that you are leav-
ing this house full of life, youth, and hope, and may
come back on the arms of your friends, with a sword
through your body? Is your mind quite made up?
Before coming to a decision, did you think of the
grief your death would cause in this unfortunate
house? For you, when your last drop of blood has
gone, all will be over, but many months, many years
will pass before our grief is stilled, and the
drops of resin will long have dried on the cross over
261
262 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
your grave when our tears will still be flowing."
My uncle wanted to go away without answering,
and perhaps he was weeping. My grandmother
caught him by the skirt of his coat.
"Then be off to your murderous rendezvous, you
brute you," she cried. "Do not keep M. de Pont-
Casse waiting. Perhaps honour requires you to
start without kissing your sister. But at least take
this relic. Cousin Guillaumot lent it to me. It
may guard you from the dangers you are going into
so recklessly."
My uncle thrust the relic into his pocket and
slipped away.
He hastened to awaken M. Minxit at his hotel.
They picked up Page and Arthus in passing, and
all went to breakfast together in a wine-shop at the
extremity of Beuvron. My uncle, if he was to fall,
did not wish to depart this life with an empty stom-
ach. He said that a soul appearing before God's
judgment seat after a good long draught feels more
encouraged and pleads its cause better than a poor
soul with nothing but sweetened water inside of it.
The sergeant was present at breakfast, and at des-
sert my uncle asked him to carry a table, a box, and
two chairs to Croix-des-Michelins. He said he
needed them for his duel. He also asked him to
build a big fire there with vine-poles from the neigh-
bouring vineyard. Then he ordered coffee.
M. de Pont-Casse and his friend put in appear-
ance punctually.
263
The sergeant did the honours of the bivouac to
the best of his ability.
"Gentlemen," said he, "be good enough to sit
down and warm yourselves. M. Rathery begs you
to excuse him if he keeps you waiting a short while.
He is breakfasting with his seconds, and will be at
your disposition in a few minutes."
Benjamin arrived a quarter of an hour later, hold-
ing Arthus and M. Minxit by the arm and singing
lustily :
"By God, a sorry soldier's he
Who never had a jolly spree."
My uncle saluted his two adversaries graciously.
"Monsieur," said M. de Pont-Casse, haughtily,
"we have been waiting for you twenty minutes."
"The sergeant must have explained the cause of
our delay. I 'hope you find it a legitimate one."
"What excuses you is that you are not a noble-
man, and this is probably the first time you have
any dealings with a nobleman."
"What do you expect? We plebeians are accus-
tomed to take coffee after each meal, and because
you call yourself Vicomte de Pont-Casse, that is no
reason why we should depart from our custom. You
see, coffee is a wholesome tonic. It stimulates the
brain agreeably and promotes thinking. If you have
not taken coffee this morning, the weapons are not
equal, and I am not sure whether my conscience will
let me measure myself against you."
264 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
"Make your jokes, Monsieur; laugh while you
can. But I tell you, he laughs best who laughs last."
"Monsieur," rejoined Benjamin, "I am not jok-
ing when I say coffee is a tonic. That is the opinion
of several celebrated doctors, and I myself give it
as a stimulant in certain diseases."
"Monsieur!"
"And your sorrel horse? I am surprised not to
see him here. Is there anything wrong with him?"
"Monsieur," said the second musketeer, "enough
of your jokes. You have not forgotten why you
have come here, have you?"
"Ah, there you are, number two. Delighted to
renew our acquaintance. Of course, I have not for-
gotten what I came here for, and the proof," he
added, pointing to the table on which the box was
placed, "is that I have made preparations to re-
ceive you."
"What's this juggler's apparatus for in a duel?"
"I don't mean to fight with the sword."
"Monsieur," said M. de Pont-Casse, "I am the
insulted party. I have the choice of weapons. I
choose the sword."
"It is I, Monsieur, who was insulted first; I will
not yield my privilege, and I choose chess."
He opened the box the sergeant had brought, took
out a chess-board, and invited the nobleman to take
his place at the table.
M. de Pont-Casse turned pale with anger.
"Are you trying to make a fool of me?" he cried.
MY UNCLE DISARMS THE VICOMTE 265
"Not at all," said my uncle. "Every 'duel is a
game in which two men stake their lives. Why
shouldn't the game be played with chess as well as
with the sword? However, if you doubt your
strength at chess, I am ready to play you a game
of ecarte or triomphe. In five points, if you like,
without a return game or a rubber. In that way it
will be over soon."
"I have come here," said M. de Pont-Casse,
scarcely able to contain himself, "not to stake my
life like a bottle of beer, but to defend it with my
sword."
"I understand," said my uncle. "You are a bet-
ter swordsman than I am, and you hope to have an
advantage over me, who never take mine in hand
except to put it at my side. Is that a nobleman's
fairness? If a mower should propose to fight you
with the scythe, or a rhi-asher with a flail, would
you accept, I ask you?"
"You will fight with the sword," cried M. de
Pont-Casse, beside himself. "Otherwise " he
added, lifting his riding-whip.
"Otherwise what?" said my uncle.
"Otherwise I will cut you across the face with my
riding-whip."
"You know how I answer your threats," re-
torted Benjamin. "No, Monsieur, this duel shall
not be carried through as you hope. If you persist
in your unfair obstinacy, I shall believe and declare
that you have speculated on your ruffian's skill, that
266 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
you have set a trap for me, that you have come here,
not to risk your life against mine, but to cripple me,
do you understand, M. de JPont-Casse? And I shall
hold you for a coward, yes, fqr a coward, my noble-
man, for a coward, yes, for a coward."
My uncle's words vibrated between his lips like a
rattling window-pane.
The nobleman could endure it no longer. He
drew his sword and rushed upon Benjamin, and
it would have been all up with Benjamin if the
poodle had not changed the direction of his sword
by throwing himself upon-M. de Pont-Casse. The
sergeant having called off his dog, my uncle cried:
"Gentleman, I call you to witness that if I fight,
it is to save this man from committing a mur-
der."
Brandishing his sword, he sustained his adver-
sary's impetuous attack without retiring a step. The
sergeant, seeing no sign of his thrust, stamped on
the grass like a war-horse tied to a tree and twisted
his wrist till he nearly threw it out of joint to indi-
cate to Benjamin the motion he ought to make in
order to disarm his man. M. de Pont-Casse, exas-
perated at the unexpected resistance, lost his sang-
froid and along with it his murderous skill. He no
longer tried to parry, only to pierce his adversary
with his sword.
"Monsieur de Pont-Casse," said my uncle, "you
would have done better to play chess. You never
parry. I could kill you at any moment"
MY UNCLE DISARMS THE VICOMTE 267
"Kill me, Monsieur," said the musketeer. "That
is what you are here for."
"I prefer to disarm you," said my uncle, and
swiftly passing his sword under his adversary's, he
sent it into the middle of the hedge.
"Well done! Bravo!" cried the sergeant. "I
could not have sent it so far myself. If you could
only take lessons of me for six months, you would
be the best swordsman in France."
M. de Pont-Casse desired to begin the combat
again. The seconds were opposed to this, but my
uncle said:
"No, gentlemen, the first time does not count, and
there is no game without a return game. The repara-
tion to which Monsieur is entitled must be complete."
The two adversaries put themselves on guard
again. At the first thrust M. de Pont-Casse's sword
went flying into the road. As he ran to pick it up,
Benjamin said to him with a sardonic smile:
"I beg your pardon, Count, for the trouble I gave
you. But it is your own fault. Had you been will-
ing to play chess, you would not have been both-
ered so often."
A third time the musketeer returned to the
charge.
"Enough !" cried the seconds. "You are abusing
M. Rathery's generosity."
"Not at all," said my uncle. "Monsieur undoubt-
edly wishes to learn the thrust. Permit me to give
him another lesson."
268 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
The lesson was not long in coming, and M. de
Pont-Casse's sword escaped his hand the third time.
"At least," said my uncle, "you would have done
well to bring a servant with you to go pick up your
sword."
"You are the devil in person," said the vicomte.
"I would rather have been killed by you than treated
so ignominiously."
"And you, my nobleman," said Benjamin, turn-
ing to the other musketeer, "you see my barber is
not here. Shall I keep my promise to you?"
"By no means," said the musketeer. "To you
belong the honours of the day. There is no cow-
ardice in giving up to you, since you do not use your
sword against the defeated man. Although you are
not a nobleman, I consider you the best swordsman
and the most honourable man I know. Your ad-
versary wanted to kill you, but you, though you had
his life in your hands, respected it. If I were king,
you should be a duke, at least, and member of the
house of peers. And if you attach any value to my
friendship, I offer it to you with all my heart and
ask yours in exchange."
He held out his hand to my uncle, who shook it
cordially. M. de Pont-Casse stood before the fire,
gloomy and sullen, as though a storm cloud were
gathering on his brow. He took his friend's arm,
gave my uncle a chilly salute, and left.
My uncle wanted to hurry back to his sister. But
the report of his victory had spread rapidly through
MY UNCLE DISARMS THE VICOMTE 269
the faubourg. At every step he was stopped by
someone calling himself a friend and congratulated
on his wonderful feat, and his arm was almost
shaken from his shoulder. The urchins that each
new event gathers in the streets swarmed about him
and deafened him with their hurrahs. In a few mo-
ments he became the centre of a frightfully noisy
crowd. They trod on his heels, spattered his silk
stockings, and knocked his three-cornered hat into
the mud. He was still able to exchange a few words
with M. Minxit, but then Cicero, the drummer,
whose acquaintance we have already made, to put
a finishing touch to his triumph, placed himself at
the head of the crowd and began to beat the charge
hard enough to shatter the bridge of Beuvron. Ben-
jamin even had to give him thirty sous for his din.
The only thing lacking to complete his misfortune
was a speech in his honour. That is how my uncle
was rewarded for having risked his life in a duel.
"If," he said to himself, "I had given a few louis
to a wretch dying of hunger in Croix-des-Michelins,
all these fools applauding me here would let me go
my way without a sound. My God, what is glory,
and to whom does it go? The fuss they make about
a name, is it so rare, so precious a blessing that
peace, happiness, affection, the finest years of one's
life, and sometimes the peace of the world, should
be sacrificed for it? What sort of a person has not
been pointed out to the public? The child that is
carried to church to the ringing bells, the ox that is
27o MY UNCLE. BENJAMIN
led through the city decorated with flowers and rib-
bons, the six-footed calf, the stuffed boa-constrictor,
the monster pumpkin, the tight-rope dancer, the
aeronaut who makes an ascent, the juggler who
swallows balls, the prince as he drives by, the bishop
who blesses, the general who returns from a vic-
torious campaign in a remote country — have not all
of them had their moment of glory? You think
you are celebrated because you have sown your ideas
in the arid furrows of a book, or made men out of
marble and passions out of ivory. But your fame
would be far greater if you had a nose six inches
long. As for the glory that survives us, I admit
not everybody can attain it, but the difficulty is to
enjoy it. Find a banker who discounts immortality,
and from to-morrow on I will toil to make myself
immortal."
My uncle wanted M. Minxit to stay to the fam-
ily dinner at his sister's, but the good man, though
his dear Benjamin stood before him safe, sound,
and victorious, was sad and preoccupied. What my
uncle had said to M. de Pont-Casse in the morning
kept recurring to his mind. He said a voice was
ringing in his ears summoning him to Corvol. He
felt nervous, like a man who is not accustomed to
coffee and has drunk a strong cup. He was fre-
quently obliged to leave the table and take a turn
about the room. His extreme excitement fright-
ened Benjamin, and he himself urged him to go back
home.
CHAPTER XX
ABDUCTION AND DEATH OF MADEMOISELLE MINXIT
MY uncle escorted M. Minxit as far as Croix-
des-Michelins, and then returned to go to bed. He
was in the complete oblivion of the first hours of
sleep when he was awakened with a shock by a vio-
lent knocking at the outside door. He opened his
window. Though the street was as dark as a deep
ditch, he recognised M. Minxit, and thought he per-
ceived indications of distress in his attitude. He
ran to open the door. Scarcely had he drawn the
bolt, when the good man threw himself into his arms
and burst into tears.
"Well, what is it, Monsieur Minxit? Tell me.
Tears are no good. Has anything happened to
you?"
"Gone! Gone!" cried M. Minxit, choking with
sobs. "Gone with him, Benjamin!"
"What, Arabella has gone with M. de Pont-
Casse?" said my uncle, divining at once what he
meant.
"You were quite right in warning me against him.
Why didn't you kill him?"
271
272 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
"There is still time for that," said Benjamin.
"But first we must start in pursuit."
"Come with me, Benjamin. All my strength
and courage is in you."
"Go with you ! Of course I will, and directly.
By the way, did it occur to you to take money?"
"I haven't a bit of cash, my friend. The poor
girl carried off every bit there was in my secretary."
"So much the better," said my uncle. "You can
at least be sure she will want for nothing until we
catch her."
"As soon as it is light, I will go to my banker to
get some funds."
"Yes," said my uncle, "do you think they will
amuse themselves making love on the greensward
by the roadside? When it is light, they will be far
far away. You must go at once to awaken your
banker, and knock at his door until he has counted
out a thousand francs. You will have to pay twenty
per cent, instead of fifteen, that is all."
"But what' road have they taken? We must
wait till daylight to make inquiries."
"Not at all," said my uncle. "They have taken
the road to Paris. Paris is the only place M. de
Pont-Casse can go to. I have it on good authority
that his leave of absence expires in a few days. I
am going at once to get a carriage and two good
horses. Join me at the Golden Lion."
As my uncle started to go out, M. Minxit said
to him:
ABDUCTION OF MLLE. MINXIT 273
"You have nothing but your shirt on."
"Right," said Benjamin, "I forgot that. It was
so dark I didn't notice it. But I shall be dressed in
five minutes, and in twenty minutes I shall be at
the Golden Lion. I will say good-bye to my dear
sister when I return from the trip."
An hour later my uncle and M. Minxit were driv-
ing along the wretched road that then led from
Clamecy to Auxerre in a rickety vehicle drawn by
two jades. By daylight winter is tolerable, but at
night it is horrible. With the utmost speed pos-
sible, it was not until ten o'clock in the morning
that they arrived at Courson. Under the porch of
La Levrette, the only tavern in the neighbourhood,
a coffin was exposed, and a whole swarm of ugly,
ragged old women were croaking around it.
"I have it from Gobi, the sexton," said one, "that
the young lady promised three thousand francs to
be distributed among the poor of the parish."
"We shall get some of that, Mother Simonne."
"If the young lady dies, as they say she will, the
proprietor of La Levrette will take everything,"
answered a third. "We ought to go see the bailiff
and get him to look after our inheritance."
My uncle took one of the old women aside and
asked her to explain what it was all about. Proud
at having been singled out by a stranger with a
carriage and pair, she gave her companions a look
of triumph, and said:
"You have done well to ask me, sir. I know
274 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
everything that happened better than they do. This
morning the man in the coffin was in the green car-
riage you see yonder in the coach-house. He was
a grand lord, worth millions, who was going with
a young lady to Paris, to court perhaps, and he
stopped here, and he will remain in that poor
cemetery to rot along with the peasants he so de-
spised. He was young and handsome, and I, old
Manette, all worn out and good for nothing, will
sprinkle holy water on his grave, and in ten years,
if I live so long, his ashes will have to make room
for my old bones. No matter how rich the grand
gentlemen, sooner or later they have to go where
we go. They may dress themselves in velvets and
taffetas, but their last coat is always made of the
planks of their coffin. They tend and perfume their
skin, but the earthworms are made for them as
well as for us. To think that I, the old washer-
woman, shall be able to go, when I like, to squat on
a nobleman's grave. Oh, my dear sir, the thought
does us good. It consoles us for being poor, and
avenges us for not being nobles. However, it is
really his fault that he is dead. He wanted to take
a traveller's room because it was the finest in the
tavern, and the two quarrelled over it, so they went
to fight in the garden of La Levrette, and the
traveller put a ball through his head. The young
lady, it seems, was with child, poor thing. When
she heard her husband was dead, she was taken in
labour, and is scarcely better off than her noble
ABDUCTION OF MLLE. MINXIT 275
husband. Doctor Debrit left her room just now.
I do his washing, and I asked how the young lady
was, and he said, 'Ah, Mother Manette, I would
rather be in your old wrinkled skin than in hers.' '
"And this lord," said my uncle, "wasn't he wear-
ing a red coat, a light wig, and three plumes in his
hat?"
"Yes, sir. Do you know him?"
"No," said my uncle, "but I may have seen him
somewhere."
"And the young lady," said M. Minxit, "is she
not tall and freckled?"
"She is about five feet three inches," answered
the old woman, "and has a skin like the shell of a
turkey's egg."
M. Minxit fainted.
Benjamin carried M. Minxit to his bed, and
bled him. Then he asked to be taken to Arabella;
for the beautiful lady dying in the pains of child-
birth was M. Minxit's daughter. She was occupy-
ing the room that her lover had obtained at the
cost of his life — a gloomy room, indeed, the pos-
session of which was scarcely worth quarrelling
about.
Arabella lay in a bed draped in green serge. My
uncle drew the curtains aside and looked at her for
some time in silence. A moist marble pallor had
spread over her face. Her half-open eyes were
faded and expressionless. Her breath escaped in
sobs. Benjamin lifted her arm lying motionless at
276 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
her side. Having felt her pulse, he shook his head
sadly, and ordered the nurse to go for Dr. Debrit.
Hearing his voice, Arabella trembled like a corpse
under the influence of a galvanic current.
"Where am I?" she said, throwing a wild look
about her. "Was it a nightmare? Do I hear you,
Monsieur Rathery, and am I still at Corvol in my
father's house?"
"You are not in your father's house," said my
uncle, "but your father is here. He is ready to
forgive you. All he asks of you is to live so that
he may live too."
Arabella's eyes chanced to fall upon M. de Pont-
Casse's uniform, which was hanging on the wall
still soaked in blood. She tried to sit up in bed,
but her limbs twisted in a horrible convulsion, and
she fell back heavily, like a corpse that has been
raised in its coffin. Benjamin placed his hand upon
her heart. It was no longer beating. He held a
mirror to her lips; the glass remained clear. Mis-
ery and happiness were all over for poor Arabella.
Benjamin stood erect at her bedside, holding her
hand in his, plunged in bitter reflections.
Just then a heavy, uncertain step was heard on
the stairs. Benjamin hastened to turn the key in
the lock. It was M. Minxit, who knocked at the
door, and cried:
"It is I, Benjamin. Open the door. I want to
see my daughter. I must see her. She cannot die
until I have seen her."
ABDUCTION OF MLLE. MINXIT 277
There is cruelty in making believe that a dead
person is still alive and active. My uncle, however,
did not shrink from this necessity.
"Go away, Monsieur Minxit, I beg of you. Ara-
bella is better. She is resting. Your coming in
suddenly might bring on a crisis that would kill
her."
"I tell you, wretch, I want to see my daughter,"
cried M. Minxit, and he threw himself with such
violence against the door that the staple of the lock
fell to the floor.
"Well," said Benjamin, hoping still to deceive
him, "you see your daughter is sleeping quietly.
Are you satisfied now, and will you go away?"
The unhappy old man threw a' glance at his
daughter.
"You are lying," he cried, in a voice that made
Benjamin tremble. "She is not asleep, she is dead!"
He threw himself upon her body and pressed her
convulsively to his breast.
"Arabella!" he cried. "Arabella! Arabella!
Oh, was it this way that I was to find you again?
My daughter, my only child! God lets the mur-
derer's hair grow, and from a father he takes his
only child. How can they tell us that God is good
and just?" Then his grief changed into anger
against my uncle. "It is you, you miserable Rath-
ery, who made me refuse her to M. de Pont-Casse.
But for you she would be married and full of life."
"Are you joking?" said my uncle. "Is it my
278 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
fault that she fell in love with a musketeer?"
All passions are nothing but blood rushing to
the brain. M. Minxit's reason had doubtless given
way under his terrible grief, and in the paroxysm
of his delirium the vein from which my uncle had
just bled him reopened. Benjamin allowed the
blood to flow, and soon a salutary swoon suc-
ceeded this superabundance of life and saved the
poor old man. Benjamin gave orders to the pro-
prietor of La Levrette for Arabella and her lover
to receive an honourable burial, and also gave him
the money with which to carry out his orders. Then
he came back to station himself at M. Minxit's bed-
side, and watched over him like a mother over her
sick child. M. Minxit hung three days between life
and the grave, but, thanks to my uncle's skilful, af-
fectionate care, the fever devouring him gradually
disappeared, and soon he was in a condition to be
transferred to Corvol.
CHAPTER XXI
A FINAL FESTIVAL
MONSIEUR MINXIT had one of those antedilu-
vian constitutions which seem made of more solid
material than our own. It was one of those deep-
rooted plants that keep a vigourous vegetation
when winter has withered the others. Wrinkles
had been unable to ruffle his granite brow. Years
had accumulated upon his head without leaving any
trace of decline. He had remained young till past
his sixtieth year, and his winter, like that of the
tropics, was still full of sap and flowers. But time
and misfortune forget nobody.
His daughter's death, coming upon her flight and
the revelation of her pregnancy dealt the strong or-
ganism a mortal blow. A slow fever was silently
undermining M. Minxit. He had renounced those
noisy pleasures which had made his life one long
festivity. He put aside medicine as a useless en-
cumbrance. The companions of his long period of
youth respected his sorrow, and ceased to see him
without ceasing to love him. His house was silent
and sealed as a tomb. Its occupants could scarcely
snatch a few stealthy glimpses of the village
279
28o MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
through the blinds that were only occasionally half-
opened. The y?rd no longer rang with the noise
of people going and coming. The early spring
weeds choked the drive, and high plants growing
along the walls formed a circle of verdure.
The poor soul in mourning needed nothing now
but obscurity and silence. He did what the wild
beast does that retires into the gloomiest depths of
its forest when it wishes to die. My uncle's gaiety
proved powerless to overcome this incurable mel-
ancholy. M. Minxit answered only with a sad,
gloomy smile, as much as to say that he understood
and thanked my uncle for his good intentions.
My uncle had counted on the spring to bring him
back to life. But the spring, which dresses the dry
earth anew in flowers and verdure, cannot revive a
grief-stricken soul, and while everything else was
being born again, the poor man was slowly dying.
It was an evening in the month of May. M.
Minxit was walking in his field, resting on Benja-
min's arm. The sky was clear, the earth was green
and fragrant, the nightingales were singing in the
poplars, the dragonflies were hovering among the
reeds of the brook, their wings making a melodious
buzzing, and the water, all covered with hawthorn
blossoms, was murmuring under the roots of the
willows.
"A fine evening," said Benjamin, trying to rouse
M. Minxit from the gloomy revery that shrouded
his mind.
A FINAL FESTIVAL 281
"Yes," he answered, "a fine evening for a poor
peasant who walks along between the flowering
hedges with his pick on his shoulder, on his way to
his smoking hut, where his children are waiting for
him. But there are no more fine evenings for the
father mourning his daughter."
"At what fireside is there not some vacant
chair?" said my uncle. "Who has not some grassy
hillock in the cemetery where he comes every year on
All Saints' day to shed pious tears? And in the
streets of the city what throng, however pink and
gilded, is not spotted with black? When sons grow
old, they are condemned to put their old parents in
the grave. When they die in their prime, they leave
a desolate mother on her knees beside their coffin.
Believe me, man's eyes were made much less for see-
ing than for weeping, and every soul has its wound,
just as every plant has its canker. But God has also
sowed forgetfulness in the path of life. It follows
death with slow steps, effacing the epitaphs death
has traced and repairing the ruins death has made.
Are you willing, my dear Monsieur Minxit, to fol-
low a piece of good advice? Then go eat carp on
the shores of Lake Geneva, macaroni at Naples,
drink sherry wine at Cadiz, and taste ices at Con-
stantinople. In a year you will come back as fat and
round as you used to be."
M. Minxit allowed my uncle to harangue him as
long as he liked, and when he finished said to him:
"How many days have I still to live, Benjamin?"
282 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
"Why?s said my uncle, amazed at the question
and thinking he had misunderstood him. "What do
you mean, Monsieur Minxit?"
"I ask you," repeated M. Minxit, "how many
days have I still to live?"
"The devil!" said my uncle. "A very embarrass-
ing question. On the one hand, I should not like to
disoblige you; but, on the other hand, I do not
know whether prudence permits me to satisfy your
desire. They tell the condemned man of his execu-
tion only a few hours before his journey to the scaf-
fold, and you "
"It is a service," interrupted M. Minxit, "that I
impose upon your friendship, because you alone can
render it. The traveller must know at what hour
he is to start, so that he may pack his trunk."
"Do you wish me to speak frankly and sincerely,
Monsieur Minxit? Will you, on your honour, not
be frightened at the sentence I shall utter?"
"I give you my word of honour," said M. Minxit.'
"Well, then," said my uncle, "I will speak as if
it were myself."
He examined the old man's dried-up face, his dim,
dull eyes which reflected only a few gleams of light,
his pulse, as if listening to its beating with his
fingers. For some time he was silent, then he said:
"To-day is Thursday. Well, on Monday there
will be one house more in mourning in Corvol."
"A very good diagnosis," said M. Minxit. "I
thought so myself. If you ever find an opportunity
A FINAL FESTIVAL 283
to introduce yourself, I predict you will become one
of our medical celebrities. But does Sunday belong
to me entirely?"
"It belongs to you from the beginning to the end,
provided you do nothing to hurry the end of your
days."
"I have nothing more to do," said M. Minxit.
"Now do me the favour to invite our friends for
Sunday to a festive dinner. I do not wish to go
away on bad terms with life, and it is with the glass
in my hand that I desire to take leave. You must
insist on their acceptance of my invitation. If neces-
sary, tell them it is their duty."
"I will go to invite them myself," said my uncle,
"and I guarantee that none of them shall fail you."
"Now, let us take up something very different.
I do not want to be buried in the churchyard. It is
in a valley, and is cold and damp, and the shadow
of the church lies on it like a crape veil. I should
be uncomfortable in there, and you know I like my
ease. I want you to bury me in my field, at the edge
of this brook whose song I love so." He tore up a
handful of grass, and said, "See, here is the spot
where I wish you to dig my last resting-place. Plant
a bower of vines here and honeysuckles, so that the
verdure may be mingled with flowers, and come here
sometimes to dream of your old friend. To make
you come oftener, and also so as not to disturb my
sleep, I leave you this estate and all my other prop-
erty. But on two conditions. First, that you live
284 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
in the house that I am about to leave empty; sec-
ond, that you continue to attend my patients as I
attended them for thirty years."
"I accept this double inheritance with gratitude,"
said* my uncle, "but I warn you I will not go to the
fairs."
"Granted," answered M. Minxit.
"As for your patients," added Benjamin, "I will
treat them conscientiously and according to the sys-
tem of Tissot, which seems to me founded on ex-
perience and reason. The first one of them to leave
this world shall bring you news of me."
"I feel the cold of evening creeping over me. It
is time to say farewell to this sky, to these old trees
which will never see me again, to these little song-
sters, for we shall not come back here till Monday
morning."
The next day he shut himself up with his friend,
the notary. The day after he grew weaker and
weaker and kept his bed. But on Sunday he rose,
had himself powdered, and donned his best coat.
Benjamin, according to his promise, had gone to
Clamecy to extend the invitations, and not one of
the friends failed to respond to this funeral call. At
four o'clock they found themselves all gathered in
the drawing-room.
M. Minxit was not slow in making his appear-
ance, tottering and resting on my uncle's arm. He
shook hands with all of them, and thanked them af-
fectionately for having given in to his last wish,
A FINAL FESTIVAL 285
which was, he said, the caprice of a dying man.
This man whom they had seen a short time before
so gay, so happy, and so full of life, had been
broken down by grief. Old age had come upon him
at one stroke. At sight of him all shed tears. Ar-
thus suddenly felt his appetite going.
A servant announced that dinner was ready. M.
Minxit seated himself as usual at the head of the
table.
"Gentlemen," said he to his guests, "this dinner is
my last. I wish my last looks to meet nothing but
full glasses and merry faces. If you wish to please
me, you will give free rein to your usual gaiety."
He poured out a few drops of Burgundy, and
held out his glass to his guests. They all said to-
gether:
"To M. Minxit's health!"
"No," said M. Minxit, "not to my health. Of
what use is a wish that cannot be gratified? But
to your health, to you all, to your prosperity, to
your happiness, and may God keep those of you
who have children from losing them !"
"M. Minxit," said Guillerand, "has taken
things too much to heart. I should not have thought
him capable of dying of sorrow. I too lost a
daughter, a daughter whom I placed at school with
the Sisters. It pained me for a time, but now I am
none the worse for it, and sometimes, I confess, the
thought occurs to me that I no longer have to pay
her board."
286 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
"A bottle broken in your wine-cellar," said
Arthus, "or a scholar taken from your school would
have caused you more sorrow."
"It well becomes you," said Millot, "to talk that
way, you, Arthus who fear no misfortune except the
loss of your appetite."
"I have more bowels than you, song-maker,"
answered Arthus.
"Yes, for digestive purposes," said the poet.
"Well, it is of some value to be able to digest
well," replied Arthus. "At least, when you go in
a cart, your friends are not obliged to fasten you
to the cart-stakes for fear of losing you on the way."
"Arthus," said Millot, "no personalities, I pray
you."
"I know that you bear me ill-will," answered
Arthus, "because I fell on you on the way from
Corvol. But sing me your Grand-Noel and we shall
be quits."
"And I maintain my song is a fine bit of poesy.
Would you like me to show you a letter from Mon-
seigneur the bishop who compliments me upon it?"
"Just put your song on the gridiron, and we shall
see what it is worth."
"I recognise you there, Arthus. Nothing has any
value for you that isn't roasted or boiled."
"What's wrong with that? My sensitiveness re-
sides in my palate, and I like to have it there as
well as anywhere else. Is a solidly organised diges-
tive apparatus worth less for purposes of happiness
A FINAL FESTIVAL 287
than a highly developed brain? That is the
question."
"If we should leave it to a duck or a pig, I do not
doubt they would decide it in your favour. But I'll
ask Benjamin to be judge."
"Your song suits me very well," said my uncle :
" 'Down on your knees, O Christians, down !'
That is superb. What Christian could refuse to
kneel when you invite him to do so twice in a line
of eight syllables? But I am of Arthus' opinion.
I prefer a cutlet in papers."
"A joke is not a reply," said Millot.
"Well, do you think there is any moral sorrow
that causes as much suffering as toothache or ear-
ache? If the body suffers more keenly than the soul,
it must likewise enjoy more energetically. That is
logic. Pain and pleasure result from the same
faculty."
"The fact is," said M. Minxit, "that if I had my
choice between M. Arthus' stomach and the over-
oxygenated brain of J. J. Rousseau, I should take
M. Arthus' stomach. Sensitiveness is the fac-
ulty of suffering. To be sensitive is to walk bare-
footed over the sharp pebbles of life, to go through
the crowd with an open wound in your side and the
people jostling against you. Man's unhappiness con-
sists of unsatisfied desires. Now, every soul that
feels too keenly is a balloon aspiring to mount to
288 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
heaven but unable to ascend beyond the limits of the
atmosphere. Give a man good health and a good
appetite, and put his soul to sleep forever, and he
will be the happiest being in all creation. To de-
velop his intelligence is to sow thorns in his life. The
peasant who plays at skittles is happier than the in-
tellectual who reads a fine book."
A general silence followed these words.
"Parlanta," said M. Minxit, "how does my case
stand against Malthus?"
"We have a warrant for his arrest," said the
sheriff's officer.
"Throw all the documents into the fire, and Ben-
jamin will pay you your expenses. And you, Rapin,
how is my affair with the clergy about my music com-
ing on?"
"The case has been postponed for a week," said
Rapin.
"Then I will be sentenced by default," answered
M. Minxit.
"But there may be a heavy fine," said Rapin.
"The sexton testified that the sergeant insulted the
vicar when he ordered him and his band to clear the
square in front of the church."
"That's not true," said the sergeant. "I only
ordered the band to play the air, 'Where are you
going, Monsieur Abbe?' '
"In that case," said M. Minxit, "Benjamin will
give the sexton a drubbing at the first opportunity
that offers itself. I want the scamp to remember me."
A FINAL FESTIVAL 289
They had reached the dessert. M. Minxit had a
punch made and poured a few drops of the flaming
liquor into his glass.
"That's bad for you, Monsieur Minxit," said
Machecourt.
"What can be bad for me now, my good Mache-
court? I must say good-bye to all that has been
dear to me in life."
His strength was rapidly declining, and his voice
was very weak.
"Gentlemen," he said, "do you know what I have
invited you for? I have invited you to my funeral.
I have had beds prepared for all of you, so that
you may be ready to-morrow morning to escort me
to my last resting-place. I don't want anyone to
weep over my death. Wear roses in your coats in-
stead of crape, and, after wetting the leaves in a
glass of champagne, strew them over my grave. It
is the recovery of a sick man, the release of a pris-
oner from his captivity, that you will be celebrating.
By the way, which of you will pronounce my funeral
oration?"
"It ought to be Page," said some.
"No," answered M. Minxit, "Page is a lawyer,
and at the grave one must tell the truth. I prefer
Benjamin."
"I?" said my uncle. "You know I am no orator."
"You are a good enough orator for me," an-
swered M. Minxit. "Come, speak as though I were
already lying in my coffin. It will give me great
29o MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
pleasure to hear what posterity will say of me while
I am still alive."
"I really don't know what to say," said Ben-
jamin.
"Say what you like, but hurry up, for I feel I am
dying."
"Well," said my uncle, " 'the loss of the man
whom we are laying under this foliage will be uni-
versally lamented.' '
" 'Universally lamented' is not good," said M.
Minxit. "No man is universally lamented. It's a
lie fit to be spoken only from a pulpit."
"Do you prefer 'He leaves behind him friends who
will mourn him a long time'?"
"That's less pretentious, but no more exact. For
one friend who loves us loyally and without reserva-
tion, we have twenty secret enemies who, like a
hunter in ambush, await in silence an opportunity to
injure us. I am sure there are in this village many
people who will be glad I have died."
"Well, 'He leaves behind him inconsolable
friends,' " said my uncle.
" 'Inconsolable' is still a lie," answered M.
Minxit. "We doctors don't know what part of our
organism it is that grief settles in, nor how it makes
us suffer. But it is a disease that is cured without
treatment and very quickly. Most griefs are only
slight scabs on ^he heart that fall almost as soon as
they form. None are inconsolable except fathers
and mothers who have children in the grave."
A FINAL FESTIVAL 291
" 'Who will long preserve your memory.' Does
that suit you better?"
"That's all right," said M. Minxit. "And that
you may preserve this memory of me the longer I
am bequeathing in perpetuity a fund for a dinner
to be given at each anniversary of my death, which
all of you are to attend as long as you remain in
this part of the country. I have made Benjamin the
executor of my will."
"That's better than a mere service," said my
uncle, and continued, " 'I will not speak to you of
his virtues.' '
"Say 'qualities,' " said M. Minxit. "That smacks
less of an exaggeration."
" 'Nor of his talents. You have all had occasion
to appreciate them.' '
"Especially Arthus, from whom I have won
forty-five bottles of beer at billiards within the last
year."
" 'I will not tell you that he was a good father.
You all know that he died loving his daughter too
much.' "
"Alas! Would to Heaven that were true!" an-
swered M. Minxit. "But the deplorable truth,
which I cannot conceal, is that my daughter died
because I did not love her enough. I acted toward
her like an execrable egoist. She loved a noble-
man, and I did not want her to marry him because
I detested noblemen. She did not love Benjamin,
and I wanted him to become my son-in-law because
292 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
I loved him. But I hope God will pardon me. We
are~not responsible for our passions, and it is our
passions that govern our reason. We must obey
the instincts God has given us, as the duck obeys the
peremptory instinct which pulls it to the river."
" 'He was a good son,' " continued my uncle.
"What do you know about that?" said M.
Minxit. "That's the way epitaphs and funeral ora-
tions are made. The paths in our cemeteries lined
with graves and cypresses are like the columns of a
newspaper — full of lies and falsehoods. The fact is
I never knew either my father or my mother, and it
has not been clearly established that I was born of
the union of a man and a woman. But I have never
complained of having been abandoned. It did not
prevent me from making my way. If I had had a
family I should perhaps not have gone so far. A
family hinders and thwarts you in a thousand ways.
You must act according to its ideas, and not accord-
ing to your own, you are not free to follow your
vocation, and it often turns you into a path where
you get stuck in the mud at the very first step you
take."
" 'He was a good husband,' " said my uncle.
"I am not so sure of that," said M. Minxit. "I
married my wife without loving her, and I
never loved her much; but she always had her way
with me. When she wanted a dress she bought one.
When a servant displeased her she discharged him.
If that makes a good husband so much the better.
A FINAL FESTIVAL 293
But I shall soon know what God thinks about
it."
" 'He has been a good citizen/ "said my uncle.
" 'You have been witnesses of the zeal with which
he has laboured to spread ideas of reform and lib-
erty among the people.' '
"You can say that now without compromising
me."
" Twill not say that he was a good friend.' '
"What will you say then?" said M. Minxit.
"A moment's patience," said Benjamin. ' 'He
has succeeded in winning the favour of fortune by
his intelligence.' '
"Not exactly my intelligence," said M. Minxit,
"although it's just as good as somebody else's. I
have profited by men's credulity. That requires au-
dacity rather than intelligence."
" 'And his wealth has always been at the service
of the unfortunate.' '
M. Minxit gave a sign of assent.
" 'He has lived like a philosopher, enjoying life
and making the people around him enjoy it, and
he died like a philosopher, too, after a grand feast,
surrounded by his friends. Wayfarers, drop a
flower on his grave.' '
"That's pretty nearly right," said M. Minxit.
"Now, gentlemen, let's drink the parting glass and
wish me a pleasant journey."
He ordered the sergeant to carry him to his bed.
My uncle wanted to follow him, but he would not
294 MY UNCLE BENJAMIN
hear of it, and insisted that they should all remain
at table until the next day.
An hour later he sent for Benjamin, who hurried
to his bedside. M. Minxit had only time to take
his hand, and then he expired.
The next morning, as M. Minxit's coffin, sur-
rounded by his friends and followed by a long pro-
cession of peasants, was about to be taken out of
the house, the priest appeared at the door, and or-
dered the bearers to take the body to 'the church-
yard.
"But M. Minxit does not want to go to the
churchyard," said my uncle. "He is going to his
field, and no one has a right to interfere."
The priest protested that the remains of a Chris-
tian must rest only in consecrated ground.
"Is the ground to which we carry M. Minxit less
consecrated than yours? Do not the flowers and
the grass grow there as well as in the churchyard?"
"Do you want your friend to be damned?" asked
the priest.
"Allow me," said my uncle. "M. Minxit has been
in the presence of God since yesterday, and unless
his case has been postponed for a week, he has al-
ready been judged. If he has been damned, your
funeral ceremony cannot revoke his sentence, and if
he has been saved, then what is the use of the cere-
mony?"
The priest cried that Benjamin was an impious
man, and ordered the peasants to, leave. All obeyed,
A FINAL FESTIVAL 295
and the bearers were disposed to follow their ex-
ample. But my uncle drew his sword and said:
"The bearers have been paid to carry the body
to its last resting-place, and they must earn their
money. If they do their work right, they will each
get half a crown, but if anyone shirks, I will beat
him with the flat of my sword till he falls to the
ground."
The bearers gave in, more frightened by Benja-
min's threats than even by the priest's, and M.
Minxit was laid in his grave with all the formalities
Benjamin prescribed.
On his return from the funeral, my uncle had an
income of ten thousand francs. We shall see later,
perhaps, what use he made of his fortune.
THE END
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